THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

ACCORDING TO ALL OF TODAY'S CONSERVATIVE SPOKESMEN, MCAIN IS RIGHT -- LOYALTY TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE IS TREASON TO TRUE AMERICANISM | 2001-07-14

Pro-immigration people always equate resistance to open borders with racism. They say that there is no room in America for whites who worry about white people. The natural corollary to this is that there is no room here for Americans who worry about Americans.

According to Lincoln and McCain, Americans have no more right to be here than anybody else. This is a nation of immigrants. So good whites are not loyal to whites, good Americans are not loyal to Americans. Both must only be concerned with all races and all nationalities.

ON THE OTHER HAND, liberals and conservatives agree that non-whites are naturally concerned about the well-being and the fate of their own kind. It is logical that the same principle would apply to good Americans.

To be a non-racist, you can't be pro-white. To be a good American, you cannot be especially concerned about Americans.

But if your loyalty is to something which is either non-white or non-American, other rules apply. For example, "Hispanic" refers to an official minority. It requires fealty to a culture based outside the United States.

It follows, as McCain said, that American Hispanics should be loyal only to their own race and culture.

This is no contradiction if the required definition of a non-racist white person is correct.

This is the inevitable logic of the Gettysburg Address. Liberals and conservatives have repeatedly agreed that America is a Melting Pot united only by paper. They agree that this the basis of Holy Diversity. This, they tell us, is True Americanism.

So McCain says that an American of Hispanic origin should be loyal to the people of his real race and his real culture, not to the American people.

Unless we change our present definitions of racism and Americanism, he is perfectly correct.