The Legitimacy of a Nation

Rebekah Suzanne

The heart of Nationalism

At midnight, every year, I am reminded of a document written over 200 years ago. The successive booms, neighbors illegally shooting off fireworks within the city limits, remind me of the importance of this document; the Declaration of Independence.  In Pat Buchanan’s article “Is America Still a Nation” he argues rather simply but intellectually that the nation our Founders founded is no longer the nation we live in. When did it change?

The Declaration of Independence is a beautiful document. The document eloquently states and bravely argues the legitimacy of an independent American government. But what makes a government legitimate? The document states “That to secure these rights,” (unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) “governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,”

So the right of the government comes from the consent of the people. Yet at the beginning of the document it clearly states that the United States is “one people”.

If you look up the word “nation” you will find that it comes from the Latin root meaning birth. If you dig deeper you find that the nominative form of the root means “birth, origin; breed, stock, kind, species; race of people, tribe”. Therefore a nation is traditionally defined as one race or tribe of people-coming from a common ancestor. Under that definition the United States of America is not a nation but rather hundreds of nations confined to a single geographic area.

This is the problem Nationalists face within the United States. While we want a strong, independent nation, we are constantly facing the stark reality that our nation is not legitimate.

Looking at history we are then left with the uncomfortable realization that while we have done our best to demonize Germany in the First World War and the Second World War that does not change the fact that Germany was a legitimate government. In fact, we have been fighting wars all around the world against legitimate governments.

Who made the United States supreme judge and jury of the world? It’s like an illegitimate child killing off all legitimate children to prove they are the only descendant of their father.

You could argue all day long about the reasons our nation is seeing economic and moral decay; the answer is clear, our diversity is diluting our moral compass. When we become the nation of everyone, we become the nation of no one.  This is why it is the heart of nationalism to defend the interests of the race that you come from. Nationalism is not just for white people. Nationalism is for each group of people to the inalienable right of self-determination. This is why I love the Declaration of Independence. It is the reminder that our nation was founded on Nationalist principles, something that we have strayed from, but is none the less at the core of what it means to be an American.