In the Aftermath of the Mueller Debacle, Who Will Bell the Cat?

The thing that bothers me about the whole Mueller affair, that ended with the exhibition on Wednesday of Robert Mueller as an old man past his prime, is what it tells us about the ideology, the culture, the religion -- call it what you will -- of our liberal friends.

Our liberal friends now think it is OK to use the full might of government to demolish the opposition. Because it is evil.

This is particularly stark for me because of my current reading of The British Conquest and Domination of India by Sir Penderel Moon, all 1245 pages of it. The genius of the book is that it tells the story of the British conventional wisdom on India beginning back in the 18th century.

So, after the Indian Mutiny of Sepoy regiments in 1857 what did the Brits do? Well, they were a bit ashamed that some of their officers that had wreaked revenge on the Indians that had massacred a few handfuls of British women and children. And they realized that the idea of keeping India in subjection forever was a pipe-dream. Sooner or later, they realized, they had to hand India over to the Indians. Because democracy. Meanwhile they should be building roads, railways, canals, and building an Indian national education system, as any modern responsible government should do, according to the conventional wisdom of the time.

This is rather different from the ideology of Gen. Siad Barre, dictator of Somalia in the time when Rep. Ilhan Omar's (D-MN) grandfather was head of Somalian lighthouses. Barre combined Marxism and Islam in his regime ideology. That gave him license to do pretty well whatever was needed. Steve Sailer:

 [T]he Somali Government was vexed to find conservative religious leaders preaching against equality of the sexes and supporting their arguments with readings from the Koran.
It decided to stop the dissent. 

Eleven of the religious leaders were rounded up, and early one morning they were executed by firing squad. 

Notice that Barre did not think, well, I know that progress according to the truth of Marxism and Islam is inevitable and that, in the long run, all the old ideologies will fall by the wayside. Because progress. No. His ideology permitted, even encouraged him to get rid of the inconvenient "conservative religious leaders" right now.

It is clear to me that the current ideology of our ruling class, the religion of intersectionality, of race cards, and the apocalyptic doctrine of the End of the World, because climate, is a millennarian doctrine, a secular religion, a follow-on from Marxism, which does not, as the Brit ideology of the 19th century did, advise the ruling class to cool it and permit government for the Natives, by the Natives -- however backward and primitive compared to Us they may be, darling.

So our liberal friends do not think that, well, those deplorables and bitter clingers may be a bunch of superstitious idiots living in the past, but, they have as much right to live their bigoted, and superstitious lives, cramped by horrific racism, sexism, and homophobia, as we have to live our glorious creative, compassionate and enlightened lives. They think that extreme measures are needed to keep bigoted hands away from the levers of political power.

When George W. Bush won the normal change election of 2000 our liberal friends were beside themselves. The psychiatrists even invented a mental illness for them, post-election stress disorder. Really? You chaps can't handle the disappointment of losing an election?

Same thing when Donald Trump won the normal change election of 2016. There was wailing and gnashing of teeth. And a deep state movement to reverse the election and get rid of Trump.

Sorry liberals. If you think like that you have a dangerous and antisocial ideology. Because the first principle of democratic elections is that there are two kinds of elections: Four More Years, and Throw the Rascals Out. In more polite circles this is called "alternation in office."

The point of "alternation in office" is that both political parties can confidently say, after an election that goes against them, that we will "wait until next time." But if there are no normal change elections every eight years, then there is no "wait until next time." If you want to get out from under the knout of the present unjust rulers you have to form a head of rebellion and literally throw the rascals out in an armed revolution.

Many people think that living for a few years under, e.g., the awful Trump, is much better than going through the horrors of revolution, of young men drafted off the street into someone's army, and summary executions.

I don't know what is behind the Democratic habit of not conceding elections, but I am inclined to think that it is telling us something. It is telling us that a lot of Democrats are thinking that something has gone wrong with the march of history. The glorious bend of the arc of history towards justice does not seem to be happening. So democracy isn't working, and this must be the work of the racist, sexist, homophobic Devil. Thus, in order to bring justice to this racist, sexist, homophobic society we have to resort to force. The other options aren't working anymore.

So the chaps that think that the thing about democracy is that it is the worst form of government, except for all the others, we have to get together to form a political movement that will form a political coalition to teach the liberal totalitarians a lesson.

I don't know which of the 47 types of nationalism that are contesting for the right to define the future is the right one for the present emergency. But we need to come up with something.

It is not going to be enough to sit around, like the mice of Gloucester, and argue about Who Will Bell the Cat.

My feeling is -- from my maxim that "there is no such thing as justice, only injustice" -- that the way to deal with our liberal friends is to put together a political movement solely based on the monstrous injustice of the current ruling class and its monstrous self-dealing, and its use of the justice system and the intelligence community both to punish its enemies that merely follow the law and exempt its friends from living in accordance with the law, and its monstrous importation of immigrants against the interests of native Americans.

Used to be that our ruling class taught the white working class that they were horribly exploited and oppressed by the bosses. Vote for us, and we will smash the bosses. Then the ruling class abandoned the white working class to unemployment and opioids.

Used to be that our ruling class taught blacks that all the whites were horrible racists and were just waiting, in the words of Joe Biden, to "put y'all back in chains." Vote for us and we will give you Freedom. Then the ruling class started importing refugees and migrants to take the jobs of blacks and abandon them to the killing fields of inner-city gang warfare.

See what I mean? Whatever the political line is, however it seems that the electorate is divided up by race or class or whatever, the fact is that the dividing lines are sitting there waiting for some damn politician to redraw them. If he has the chops.

That's what I mean by "whoever shows up" nationalism. It's all down to what some damn politician can say to persuade the voters that he cares about people like them. Race, class, gender, national origin: these are all fake tribalisms waiting for some low-rent genius to stir the pot and reorder the fake tribes of politics to give him 51 percent of the vote and/or a majority in the Electoral College.

Then we can get down to worrying about the Deficit.

Responding to the Call for Civility

Back in the day, Republicans and conservatives believed in "civility." Not any more. Now the conventional wisdom is that you throw the hate of the left right back in their faces. But what?

In the last week there have been two helpful pieces listing a bunch of hate quotes from Democrats. Nothing extraordinary. Just routine stuff accusing Republicans of being fascists or racists. From Steven Hayward at Powerline blog and from Larry Elder. These two gentlemen have provided actual quotes. But I have boiled them down into counterpunches.

Oh yeah? Whatabout FDR in 1945 saying that a victory for Republicans would be a victory for fascism?

Whatabout President Truman in 1948 saying that a victory for Dewey would be a "Fascistic threat to American freedom."

Whatabout in 1964 when "San Francisco Mayor John Shelley said Republicans 'had Mein Kampf as their political bible.'"

Whatabout in 1964 when Gov. Pat Brown said "The stench of fascism is in the air" at the Goldwater convention.

Whatabout Coretta Scott King in 1980, complaining that Ronald Reagan was back to the "Ku Klux Klan and a resurgence of the Nazi Party."

Whatabout a Dem. Rep. in 1983 saying that Ronald Reagan was "trying to replace the Bill of Rights with fascist precepts lifted verbatim from 'Mein Kampf.'"

Whatabout Maxine Waters in 1992 calling President Bush a racist "for many, many reasons."

Whatabout in 1994 after the GOP midterm landslide when a Dem. Rep. said “It’s a glorious day if you’re a fascist.”

Whatabout in 1995 Dem. Rep. John Dingell saying the GOP House is like "the Duma and the Reichstag,"

Whatabout in 1995 Dem. Rep. John Lewis saying the GOP is "coming for our children."

Whatabout Dem. reaction to Gingrich era budget cuts? "Worse than Hitler."

Whatabout in 1999 Donna Brazile accusing the GOP of "having a white-boy attitude."

Whatabout in 2000 Donna Brazile saying the GOP would "rather take pictures with black children than feed them."

Whatabout in 2005 Dem. Rep. Charles Rangel saying that "George Bush is our Bull Connor."

Whatabout in 2005 Al Gore accusing President Bush of unleashing "squadrons of digital brownshirts" to harass the media.

Whatabout in 2005 Howard Dean saying that Dem. vs. GOP is "good versus evil."

Whatabout in 2006 when Claire McCaskill said George W. Bush "let people die on rooftops" in New Orleans.

Whatabout in 2006 when Hillary Clinton said the GOP House had "been run like a plantation."

Whatabout in 2011 when Debbie Wasserman Schultz said the GOP wanted to drag the nation back to "Jim Crow laws."

Whatabout in 2012 when Joe Biden told a black audience that Mitt Romney was going to "put y'all back in chains."

Whatabout in 2014 when Dem. Rep. Charles Rangel said that "some [Republicans] believe that slavery isn't over, and they think they won the Civil War."

Like I say. If you accuse someone of being a racist then you are a hater. If you accuse someone of hate then you are a racist/sexist, Whatever.

Humans Usually Want Seat-warmers to Rule Them

Usually, rulers are dull idiots, seat-warmers. We humans like it that way.

But when the chips are down, that is when we choose a high-risk leader.

Think back in our recent US past.

Eisenhower? Safe pair of hands.

Kennedy? Lightweight promoted as a lightbringer.

Nixon? Safe pair of hands.

Carter? Pompous idiot.

Reagan? Unguided missile.

Bushes? Safe pair of hands.

Clinton? Safe pair of hands playing a rascal.

Obama? Pompous idiot.

Trump? Unguided missile.

And I think the same is true of our Brit friends. The unguided missiles are Churchill, Thatcher, and now maybe Boris Johnson. The rest were the usual idiots.

Why? Because in normal times you don't want the unguided missiles in charge of the government. There's no telling what they may do.

There's a remarkable piece by Toby Young about Boris Johnson out there that shows that, in normal times, you don't want him near the Prime Minister's mansion. But in the chaotic Brexit era, where the Brexit Party is threatening to tear the Conservative Party in two?

Well, when the chips are down, you gotta be willing to take a risk.

Young remembers Boris Johnson's first speech at the Oxford Union. He acted like a buffoon, forgetting his lines, which normally would be the kiss of death. Instead, his speech was a triumph.

This was no ordinary undergraduate proposing a motion, but a Music Hall veteran performing a well-rehearsed comic routine.

There was the time he beat the professors at Scrabble.

There was the occasion when he was holidaying with his family in Greece, aged 10, and asked a group of Classics professors if he could join their game of Scrabble. They indulged the precocious, blond-haired moppet, only to be beaten by him. Thinking it was a one-off, they asked him to play another round and, again, he won. 

 To Toby Young, Boris Johnson was without doubt the "big man" on campus, whatever the campus.

He was without doubt the biggest man on campus—the person most likely to succeed. He made no secret of his desire to be Prime Minister one day, and not just a run-of-the-mill, common-or-garden PM, but up there with Gladstone and Disraeli.

But the Tories in Britain would never have elected Johnson to be their leader unless they felt it was Boris or Bust. Unless they had Nigel Farage and his Brexit Party breathing down their necks.

Just as the US would never had elected Trump as president without the ordinary middle class and the white working class feeling that it was now or never. The same is true of ordinary Brits in Britain.

But there is also a serious side to Boris. From his speech after winning the Conservative Party election.

And time and again, it is to us [the Conservatives] that the people of this country have turned to get that balance right between the instincts to own your own house, your own home, to earn and spend your own money, to look after your own family. 

Good instincts, proper instincts, noble instincts. And the equally noble instinct to share and to give everyone a fair chance in life. And to look after the poorest and the neediest. And to build a great society.

But wait! I thought that Boris Johnson was supposed to be a bumbling oaf? How come he can in a short paragraph lay claim to both the themes of modern society, the individualism of the market and the need to help those less fortunate?

Everybody Said, back in 2016, that Trump would be a disaster. Maybe they are right, but it hasn't happened yet.

Everyone is Saying, right now, that Brexit will wreck Britain and Boris is a buffoon. Who knows?

If You Call Someone a Racist You are a Hater

America's Big Problem is what to do about people that play the race card, as in accusing anyone that dares to disagree with them of being a racist.

Let's face it; ordinary white Americans have been in a funk since the day after the Civil Rights Act was signed on July 2, 1964.

You would think that after this landmark declaration of equal rights that the race question would have been solved and everyone would have lived happily ever after.

You would be wrong because, according to my Maxims, "politics is division." There is absolutely no point for anyone in politics to let anyone live happily ever after, because then they won't listen to politicians and vote for the guy that promises to protect "us" from "them" and hand out loot after the victory.

So, anyone that disagreed with the liberal or lefty or Democratic talking point of the day was branded a racist. Right up to the present moment.

In this we can see the power of the modern educated ruling class. After all, there is not physical reason why people should be ashamed of being racist, i.e., preferring their own kind over all others. Moreover, the left teaches its Little Darlings to be outrageously proud of their race, their gender, and whatever defines them as different. Hey, pal. I call that racism.

In fact, people can be carefully taught to be ashamed of themselves. Like the poor bloody Germans after World War II who were taught by the Western Allies and the Soviets to be ashamed of themselves. So when David Cole would talk to Germans: 

The overwhelming majority of Germans I met dealt with the humiliation by apologizing, bowing, and prostrating themselves...  [T]hey’d literally start crying like children. “We’re a bad people! We did bad things! We deserve the scorn, we deserve the punishment. We owe the world an eternity of apologies.”

 Yes, well. These are the Germans that invented modern philosophy, modern physics, modern chemistry, the that jumped over the chasm of the impossibility of relativity and quantum mechanics. Then they lost a stupid war because they were governed by stupid idiots. Then they voted for a leader that promised to lead them to glory...

Hey, I've just been reading about the Brits during the Indian Mutiny of 1857-58. They got pretty rough with the riff-raff that murdered their women and children in places like Lucknow and Cawnpore. Maybe we should be teaching the Brits a lesson. How dare they avenge themselves on the prostrate Indian people!

Well, of course, we are, because our lefty friends have spent the last 100 years, after Lenin, telling us that western imperialism was the worst thing ever.

Actually, western imperialism was the long withdrawing roar of imperialism, because, in my opinion, after about 1750 with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, Empire Did Not Pay. You see that with the Brits in India. On the one hand they acted like regular rulers always getting their knickers in a twist about the threat of the ruler next door. On the other hand they started worrying about building roads and railways and canals and education in India.

Well, western colonialism was not the worst thing ever. I'd say that the worst thing ever was probably something like Genghis Khan's thoughtful massacres of cities like Baghdad, Kiev, Samarkand, with everyone, male and female, killed and heaps of skulls, etc. Or Stalin's slave state. Or Mao's slave state.

But our lefty friends have been making hay out of western colonialism, and African slavery, and the subjection of women, and gays, and all the rest of the LGBT zoo.

And they won't stop until we tell them to put it where the sun don't shine, and back it up with a punch to the solar plexus.

My idea is that when anyone makes an accusation of racism the immediate call-back is:

Really. I guess you must be a hater.

And if someone accuses anyone of being a hater, the answer is:

Really. I guess you must be a racist.

Of course, "racist" should be changed out for "sexist" "heterophobe" or whatever, depending on the context.

The point is that you need to have this ready for immediate action, because most of us are nice polite people that don't have convenient insults ready to hand like our lefty pals.

But look. If we are going to push back against these chaps, who do, after all, condone the great crimes of the millennium, then we have to go out armed and dangerous.

And one thing our lefty friends don't expect is for us to have a verbal punch to the solar-plexus all ready to go.

Really, this is not that hard. The ordinary people of America and the world are good people that go about their business and when there is an emergency they all rush forward to help.

But we need to defend ourselves. And I think the accusation of "hate" just fits the bill.

Because accusing someone of being a racist in this post civil-rights act world is the nastiest, meanest, most hateful thing you can do.

Anyone that makes an accusation of racism/sexist/etc. is a hater.

Period. Full stop. 

Women and Politics

There is no doubt to me that men and women are different, although I realize that our liberal friends beg to differ.

In fact, you are not allowed to say that men and women are different. But that is nothing new. Usually, there are all kinds of things you are not allowed to say.

But I think that men and women are profoundly different. Apart from any genetic reasons arising out of the Y chromosome, there is this.

Down the ages men have been the chaps defending the hunter band, or defending the border. And women have been the ones "keeping the kids alive."

My point is that men and women have a different approach to conflict. With men, shall we say, it involves fisticuffs, or at least the threat thereof. With men, the concept of honor is all bound up with the reputation for courage.

With women onflict involves the community of women and Mean Girl culture. In other words, conflicts are resolved by naming and shaming, and getting the rest of women in the community to say, of a certain woman, "I can't believe she said/did that." With women, the concept of honor is all bound up with the reputation for chastity: for being what I call a Good Little Girl.

Now it is my belief that politics is a development, a de-escalation, of the natural and physical culture of males, which is to resolve conflicts with a fight. Same with law. Back in the day, conflicts were resolved by the lex talionis, otherwise known as "an eye for an eye." If you damage the property or the livestock of your neighbor you must make restitution, or your kin must make restitution, or face a fight from him and his kin. You killed a guy? Then his kin have the right to kill you.

So the point of government with the monopoly on force is to end the old system of private vengeance. What a concept! Then there is law, which provides a forum in which the normal disagreements of life and commerce can be worked out by an impartial judge. In the old days, the courts were mostly for merchants to resolve their differences. It worked so well that the kings wanted in on the reputation for impartiality that the merchants´ courts had obtained.

But women are different. The point is that women are typically stuck where they are and do not have the option that men have had, when they get in a row with the other men, to head out for the territory. They have to stick it out. And so they resolve their differences with the conversations -- or gossip -- of the community of women. Of course, nothing is equal, and so some women are skivvies; some women are whores; some women are Mean Girls, and some women are Queen Bees. The power of the community of women is the power of naming and shaming, and of course in the extreme case to ostracize. For the vast majority of women this power is enough to keep them socialized to the values of the community. Hey, they have nowhere else to go!

I recently read an interesting interview in NRO about abortion, and interview between Kathryn Jean Lopez and Frederica Matthewes-Green. Says Green:

So often, the pregnancy that seems terrifying, cataclysmic, evolves and comes to be manageable; then, when the baby is placed in her mother’s arms, a bond is forged that may well be called primeval. It is one of those moments when we realize we are enacting some eternal drama, more profound than we can grasp. Somehow we have gotten caught up in the wheels of the universe. The bond between mother and newborn is the foundation of all human love. To treat it as irrelevant or negligible is to threaten something close to the heart of the human story.

 In other words, it's all about the emotions. And, she adds, what women in difficult pregnancies need is moral support. "I needed just one person to stand by me."

Now I think that abortion should not be determined by the law. I think it should be determined by the community of women. It is up to the community of women to to determine what to think and feel and say about another woman's difficult pregnancy. And I tell you, the woman in question will accept the verdict of the Mean Girls. Because that is who women are. Now she will complain about the decision of the women for the rest of her life: "I can't believe they said that!" That is how women deal with most of the events of life; they complain about them.

And I am not being judgmental about this. Not at all! I am just saying that life for women is inseparable from the community and they will accept the decision of the community.

But in our modern age we have encouraged women to enter into the public square of politics and business, an area of human life for which they are not programmed by their genes and by the thousands of generations of women's life. So what they do is treat politics as just an extension of the community of women and its way of social control by naming and shaming. Hello corporate HR departments!

I suspect that this development is disastrous.

I believe that politics should cover the areas that used to be subject to the men's culture of force and insult. I believe that women should continue to have domination of the areas of human life that fall short of violence and force.

In fact, the overwhelming majority of human conflicts can be resolved short of force and violence. In other words, short of government and its policemen.

But in our age we have made everything subject to law and the government's monopoly on force.

I think this is a disaster, and I think that we need a return to the days when the women resolved most interpersonal conflicts with their culture of naming and shaming, and, in the extreme, ostracism.

And I think that men should keep out of the emotional world of the community of women and let the women get on which their ancient method of social control. And I include in this the whole question of welfare and education, in which women have a particular interest.

But where violence rears its ugly head: that is where we need guys, and that is where we need to crack a few heads, pour encourager les autres. 

The Politician That Trumps the Race Card

In his piece today old warhorse Michael Barone rehearses the historic character of each of our political parties. Says he:

The Republican Party was formed to oppose the Kansas-Nebraska Act that allowed slavery in the territories... Ever since it has been centered on one core constituency of people who are regarded by themselves and others as typical Americans but by themselves are not a majority of the nation.

And the Democrats?

The Democratic Party was formed to oppose the Second Bank of the United States and support Andrew Jackson... Ever since, it has been a coalition of divergent constituencies, capable of winning robust national majorities in favorable times but being fractiously fissiparous in others.

Any questions? Well, we could repeat the line of Steve Sailer:

As a Coalition of the Fringes, the only thing that holds together the Democrats is demonizing core Americans. Without ever increasingly whipping up hatred of whites, what is there to keep the Democrats’ collection of miscellaneous identity groups from turning on each other? 

Now the interesting thing is that I, even as an immigrant, have always considered myself a typical American. It started when I found that I disliked other Brits back in the 1970s complaining about America and Americans. I found that I did not want to be around that kind of person. Now I know how to make fun of it, as the Aussies do: "Go back to Britain you whingeing Pom." By 1980 people were commenting about the fact that I had become a "rock-ribbed" Republican.

So be it. But I am not the only person in the world. And I propose to you that the main thing to know about the Trump era is that the white working class now considers itself as typical Americans.

And the recent move of the white working class to the Republican Party makes complete sense. The old white working class does not consider itself part of the fringe any more. They consider themselves typical Americans.

Of course, as Eeyore may not have said, many moons ago,  "I was pushed." The white working class was perfectly happy being the Little Darlings of the ruling class, the beneficiaries of political loot and plunder, from above-market wages to Social Security. But then came the civil rights era, and the white working class had to make room for the new girl on the block, blacks and women. So today the white working class does not derive loot and plunder from voting Democratic. Not any more. They have to share those firefighter jobs with women and minorities. And the good old lifetime union jobs are gone with the ossified management that went with them like bacon with eggs.

You can see that white working-class Americans see themselves as typical Americans by the way that President Trump speaks at his rallies. His rhetoric is pure America-boosting. If you were to think of yourself as a typical American his rhetoric would seem completely natural and physical. But if you think of yourself as someone special -- and you could be special for any one of a thousand reasons, all of them coming down to the fact that you are a hyphenated American, from educated American to Somali American -- then you think that Trump is racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic and a hater.

The way that our Democratic friends keep their Coalition of the Fringes together is by teaching them to hate typical Americans. Typical Americans are all racist sexist homophobes that will, if given the chance, "send them back" to where they came from. The genius of this strategy is that it has worked, and that the worst and most embarrassing thing in the world is to be called a "racist." So today all typical Americans live in fear of being branded a "racist."

And boy, haven't our liberal friends had a field day playing that "race card" for the last 50 years!

But I predict that one fine day a politician will appear in America that will discover how to Trump the race card.

Oh my! Imagine the liberal wailing and gnashing of teeth on that day, the rending of garments, the tears, the rage, the demand for safe spaces -- the Hate!

Of course, I am a simple fellow. And I think that the fact that we have a President called "Trump" may be a portent that something is in the wind on the race-card front.

If indeed President Trump actually does Trump the race card, I will tell all my liberal friends that it is another proof of God's existence. And even a mild suggestion that God has a sense of humor.

But politics will still be the same. There will be a Republican Party of typical Americans, and politicians will appeal to us with the themes of Ain't America Great, and suggesting that those that don't like it can go back where they came. There will be a Democratic Party of the fringes, and politicians will appeal to them by wailing about their victimhood at the hands of the toxic typicals, and by playing the victim card on typical Americans.

Because, like the man said, politics is division. Into Us and Them.

"Whoever-Shows-Up" Nationalism

There's a lot of sound and fury on the right these days about nationalism. The argument is the old one about which witch is which? Which nationalism is the right one?

Is it civic nationalism, "an inclusive form of nationalism that adheres with traditional liberal values of freedom, tolerance, equality, and individual rights?" (La Wik)

Is it white nationalism, "a type of nationalism or pan-nationalism which espouses the belief that white people are a race and seeks to develop and maintain a white national identity?" (La Wik)

Is it "blood and birth" nationalism, proposed by Vox Day? "Nations are not soil, they are blood and birth. Because nations are people, extended families that share genetics, language, religion, culture, and traditions." (Vox Day)

Here is what I think, I think that proper, effective nationalism is "whoever-shows-up" nationalism.

That's because I believe that every nation was forged in the blood of war and/or revolution. (Note how my "blood" is slightly different from Vox Day's blood). The cult of the nation is a cult that is put together after the formation of the nation, and its forging in the furnace of war, and the blood that was shed to win the war.

The cult of the nation is the lingering brotherhood of the men that fought in the war. And those guys would be? They would be the men that showed up and risked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor in the conflict.

See, the nature of honor in men is the reputation for courage. So, if you are a man who has been through a nation-creating war, your reality and your reputation is the knowledge of the courage and the honor of the men that served with you, and their knowledge of your courage as you served with them in that war. And you and your comrades will come to set the tone and the narrative of the national founding. And so it always has been, and so it always should be.

But, obviously, as time goes by, the founding narrative will start to wear off, and new generations will arise, that knew not the founding generation. They will, of course, change and probably weaken the original notion of the nation that was created by the founders and their publicists. But that is life.

And so the founding narrative winds down and fragments, until another war. And then the nation will be redefined by the men that showed up.

We can see that in the founding generation that created the American Revolution, fought its war, and set up the nation of the United States of America. A telling point, I think, is that men that fought in the war were forever after known by their rank in the war. Thus, Colo. Hamilton, not Secretary Hamilton.

Same thing occurred after the Civil War, which is often called a Second Founding. President McKinley was called Major McKinley, after his rank in the Civil War.

After World War I there were tons of movies celebrating the heroes of that war, including, significantly in musicals like On Moonlight Bay, and Yankee Doodle Dandy. After the start of World War I, by the way, there were no more German Americans. They all became Americans, or else.

World War II, in my view, healed all the divisions of the 1930s, as the sons of immigrants, Italian, Jewish, Polish, Irish, you name it, were all sent off to war, and became buddies. (Note that the segregation of the armed forces meant that African Americans didn't get to be foxhole buddies with the 1900 immigrants. What a missed opportunity that was).

The most famous nation-forging operation in our modern memory is the genius foundation of Germany by Bismarck, who tricked all the various German states and statelets into joining in his three carefully calibrated victorious wars: in 1862 against Denmark; in 1866 against Austria; and in 1870 against France. At the end of it Germany proclaimed the Second Reich, a united German nation, in the very heart of France, and the palace of its absolute monarchs, the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. The point of these wars was not conquest; it was to unite the Germans into a single nation. The Germans subsequent problems can be attributed to the fact that Bismarck was followed by idiots that really had no understanding of what he had done and why.

So I believe that it doesn't matter who Americans are, whether they are the original founding stock, or today's "diverse" America. What matters is what happens the next time we have a war.

Of course, it is possible that the war we are talking about is the current "cold civil war." The winners will get to define what America is all about for the next 50 years.

The question will be: who shows up. They will get to define what the post-war America is all about.