debut: 11/27/06
54,454 runs
Wow
On Nov. 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivered one of the greatest speeches in American history, the Gettysburg Address. It opened “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
On Tuesday, Eric Schmitt, the junior senator from Missouri, declared that Lincoln was wrong.
“What is an American?” This was the question Schmitt posed at the fifth annual National Conservatism Conference in Washington. His answer is that the nation is fundamentally not based on the idea of equality or freedom or any other ideal. Nor is it accessible to people of all races and religions. It is fundamentally, he told an assembled crowd, a white homeland.
The white Europeans who settled America and conquered the West “believed they were forging a nation—a homeland for themselves and their descendants,” he said. “They fought, they bled, they struggled, they died for us. They built this country for us. America, in all its glory, is their gift to us, handed down across the generations. It belongs to us. It’s our birthright, our heritage, our destiny. If America is everything and everyone, then it is nothing and no one at all. But we know that’s not true. America is not a ‘universal nation.’ ”
The implications of this vision are serious. This is a repudiation of our Constitution and the core of a national identity that includes all its citizens. It means that to be American is not about citizenship at all. “What is an American?” Schmitt asked. It is a white person. America is a white homeland that organically binds together white people of the past, present and future. And its policies must be guided for their benefit if they are to succeed.
On Tuesday, Eric Schmitt, the junior senator from Missouri, declared that Lincoln was wrong.
“What is an American?” This was the question Schmitt posed at the fifth annual National Conservatism Conference in Washington. His answer is that the nation is fundamentally not based on the idea of equality or freedom or any other ideal. Nor is it accessible to people of all races and religions. It is fundamentally, he told an assembled crowd, a white homeland.
The white Europeans who settled America and conquered the West “believed they were forging a nation—a homeland for themselves and their descendants,” he said. “They fought, they bled, they struggled, they died for us. They built this country for us. America, in all its glory, is their gift to us, handed down across the generations. It belongs to us. It’s our birthright, our heritage, our destiny. If America is everything and everyone, then it is nothing and no one at all. But we know that’s not true. America is not a ‘universal nation.’ ”
The implications of this vision are serious. This is a repudiation of our Constitution and the core of a national identity that includes all its citizens. It means that to be American is not about citizenship at all. “What is an American?” Schmitt asked. It is a white person. America is a white homeland that organically binds together white people of the past, present and future. And its policies must be guided for their benefit if they are to succeed.
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