Letter to the Editor

National Review, 4-3-17 issue

Thoughts On Nationalism, Ann Arbor and Newspaper Names

written Sa 4-8-17 sent Mo 4-10-17 to letters@nationalreview.com

Thanks for your excellent magazine. I'd like to comment on 2 articles in the 4-3-17 issue i.e. Ramesh Ponnuru's interesting article on Nationalism and Patriotism (Cont'd), and also Jay Nordlinger's 'Ages of Argus'. On the first, I think its crucial in these discussions to distinguish the Government from the Nation and its culture. Others have noted that "America is a Christian nation with a secular government" (or 'a nation with the soul of a church') and that "secularism is fine for a strictly limited government, but fatal for a society as a whole." I'd add that Christians, as we witness and respond to a government which has massively exceeded its constitutional authority, will tolerate its resecularization ONLY along with its reminimization along Constitutional guidelines (i.e. this is our offer of truce to the Left in the culture wars). Since the latter doesn't appear possible at this time, we will continue in the meantime to fight for conservative Christian control of the levers of power, since these are far too powerful and dangerous to abandon to the secular Left. In recent years we've experienced increased threats to our core loyalties, including faith, family, friends and freedom i.e. all key parts of what we call our 'nation and its culture'. I agree with the libertarians that the ultimate solution (i.e. that of our Founders) is to keep government as small as possible consistent with maintaining order, but until that happens (never?) we must keep fighting for 'our nation and its culture'.

Its been said that 'limited government' and 'free enterprise' are like spinster aunts i.e. we all give 'lip service' but also shy away from actual sacrifices for them. Even many republicans, once they're in power, seem to lose interest in these ideals. But I agree that if beating Hillary (and her transnationalist and identity politics agenda) requires compromising these 'aunts' for a time, I'm OK with that.

I also enjoyed Jay's article on newspapers. I spent the 1982-3 and fall '83 school years living in Ann Arbor finishing my BSEE degree, the 1st living on E Kingsley Rd and the 2nd in married housing on the North Campus. My hometown's paper was the Grand Haven (MI) Tribune, which I delivered as a boy. A few years ago, local politician J D Hayworth dubbed 2 of our local Phoenix-area papers as The Arizona Repugnant (Republic) and The Scottsdale Spitoon (Tribune) :-) due to their left-wing biases. While Zeitung does mean newspaper, its literal meaning is 'zeit' (time) as a thing (-ung) i.e. 'the times' (I lived in Munich June 1990 to Dec 1991, working for Siemens).

Thanks and keep up the great work!

Steve Sawyer