September 20, 2016

We need to address the divisions in the country, sometimes dressed up in "nationalisms" — white, Christian, Southern — which seek exclusion or separation. Who would better deal with such problems? In last Friday’s Washington Post, George Will worried that the election might produce "an unleashed, and perhaps unhinged, Democratic majority" in the Senate. How awful! We wouldn’t want policy to be made, problems to be addressed, by such wild, irrational people. Fortunately, we can turn to a Republican, who had a better and nobler view of nationalism, one which seeks to unite Americans in common cause.

We are all Americans. Our common interests are as broad as the continent. I speak to you here in Kansas exactly as I would speak in New York or Georgia, for the most vital problems are those which affect us all alike. The National Government belongs to the whole American people, and where the whole American people are interested, that interest can be guarded effectively only by the National Government.

So said Theodore Roosevelt in a speech entitled "The New Nationalism."

Adopting this vision would require that we think of ourselves as Americans, something — apart from slogans — we often have had some difficulty doing, and which seems a distant hope at present. It requires a sense of, and a commitment to, common goals and welfare: in short, a sense of community. "The New Nationalism puts the national need before sectional or personal advantage." TR quoted another Republican, Abraham Lincoln: "I hold that while man exists it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind."

Sadly, their Republican Party no longer exists. Blathering, as the current Republican candidate does, about making America great while fanning flames of division, demonstrates that it is not the Democrats who have become unhinged.