From: A Young Illinois Reader [Send Him Mail]

I was pleased to read the comments of the "non-conservative woman" whose letter was recently published. It can't be said enough that Conservatism Inc. views immigration in much the same way the Left does: as a means to acquire better people than the uppity constituents they actually have, as a way to depress wages for the benefit of the bipartisan ruling class, as a foil for their own schmaltzy morality plays and ideological hobbyhorses, and so on. As such, Conservatism Inc. is not merely useless. It's worse than useless.

It is discouraging to think that we can expect no help from the Beltway Right, but perhaps a better way too look at it is that immigration patriots are unburdened by the need to accept or defend the narratives of Conservatism Inc. In particular, we are free to transcend the kind of tribal posturing that generates more heat than light, the sort of ostentatious red-state bait that your reader rightly scorns. It may suit Conservatism Inc. to play up the symbolic markers of the Culture War, but we don't have to follow their lead.

That's not to say that you or I will necessarily disagree with the latest Fox News cause célèbre, but rather that the promise of nationalism is that it challenges the ruling class from both the right and the left. It is a meta-political cause, concerned less with the specifics of national policy than with the survival of a nation for which that policy might be made.

I have liberal friends who are not conservatives or Republicans for the same reason they are not Zoroastrians—they just don't come from that social, regional, or cultural background. They are in any case smart, thoughtful, and productive people, and I believe we will win when we can take the National Question to them without encumbering ourselves with the baggage of Conservatism Inc.

The Republican base is already implicitly on our side, because the Cultural Marxists have it in for them and they know it. But the Dissident Right has something to say to non-conservatives, too! We offer the prospect of higher wages for the working class, respect for organic communities, decreased environmental pressures, solvency for the welfare state, restraint in foreign policy, restored federalism, high social capital, support for civil liberties, and disdain for the atomized consumerism one sees at the local mega-mall.

The question for thoughtful Americans of all stripes is this: do we care about the things we say we care about?

If we on the Dissident Right have the imagination and foresight to transcend the narrow identity politics that sustain Conservatism Inc., and if enough honest liberals reciprocate rather than sneer at "bitter clingers" in flyover country, then we may yet see that happy day when the Cultural Marxists, ethnic empire-builders, and Davos Men get booted from the halls of power.

See previous letters from this reader.