No mystery there. But it pays to be reminded–friend and foe alike.
With the recent midterm elections (NOTE: This article first appeared in 2011. — ed), many within the mainstream conservative movement, especially represented by the Tea Parties, have asserted that we Americans need to “take our country back” from the politicians in Washington. This of course prompts the question of who “we” are and what it would mean to take “our” country back.
Inevitably, those within the mainstream right simply advocate voting for the Republican party or for candidates who promise to rein in spending, stop amnesty for illegal immigrants, and cut taxes. Even when Republicans are elected, there is the invariable disappointment that comes shortly after victory when entitlement programs are not rolled back. It is far too easy for leftists to brand Tea Partiers or other mainstream conservatives as racist because of the perceived over-representation of white people at rallies or other engagements. So the Tea Party and Republican party make it their top priority to appeal to minorities, rather than continuing to advocate for limited government and fiscal responsibility. By taking this approach, folks within the Tea Party or other movement conservative organizations actually legitimize the criticisms of the left who argue that minority participation and involvement is a prerequisite for political legitimacy. In the process, movement conservatives have lost sight of their original stated goals and platforms. By capitulating to politically correct standards, movement conservatives are willing to sacrifice their own interests in favor of the interests of others. Movement conservatism will continue to fail, and several election cycles have been wasted on trying to make a multi-racial nation (an oxymoron) work. So all of this leads us to ask the question, who does America belong to?
One of the chief distinctions that must to be brought up is the difference between a nation and a country. A country is geographic and political in nature, and is a group of people who occupy the same territory and share a common government. A nation constitutes a group of people who share common ethnic origin, and usually implies common culture, religion, and language. Ideally countries and nations would overlap as much as possible, but there are historic and contemporary examples when this is not the case. After the Second World War, and during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and America, the nation of Germany was divided up into the separate countries of East and West Germany. The nation of Korea remains divided into North and South Korea for political reasons to this day. There are also several examples, both historical and modern, in which multiple nations occupy the same country. The Roman Empire is a classic example. The distinction between nations and countries or governments is one that is also recognized in the Bible. Christ distinguished between nations and kingdoms when he predicted in the Olivet Discourse that nation would rise against nation, and kingdom would rise against kingdom.1 Both Old and New Testaments use separate words for nations and kingdoms.2
The traditional understanding of the American national identity was that Americans were white Europeans, and this fact was reflected in national policy. America was founded as a result of permanent English colonization of what became known as the North American continent. Colonial charters were clearly written for the English people, and there was no confusion about the national identity of the colonists. The Mayflower Compact establishing the Plymouth Colony was addressed to “our Dread Sovereign, King James,”3 indicating that the Plymouth colonists still possessed the notion that their migration to a different continent had not changed their national identity.
Continue here….