Post-Proposition Nation

The big ideological gripe that the hatethinkers in the reactionary right would seem to have with the mainstream would be a rejection of the proposition nation. The left have taken their belief in a proposition nation to the extreme. Even Lindsay Graham - nominally a conservative - has stated that America is an idea and the people are merely interchangeable. It's not difficult to argue against that extreme of a belief in the proposition nation, and most conservatives actually do reject it.

But what about the more moderate proposition nation? America has always claimed that the proposition which defines us is our belief in liberty and mutually respected natural rights. We each get rights and are pretty much free to do as we like so long as we don't disenfranchise someone else of his rights. There is nothing in our body of law that requires the people who compose the citizenry to be of any race or background, unlike countries like Mexico where national demographics are actually enforced by law. The question of whether we ought to live in a proposition nation is one of endless debate, but the question of whether we are a proposition nation is more straightforward. Without doubt America is the quintessential proposition nation. We are the great experiment.

That, however, is becoming increasingly irrelevant. What exactly are the propositions? There is no longer a mutual contract of individual rights. Look at how viciously the left attacks our freedom of speech, or gun ownership. The fourth amendment isn't worth the ink it was written with. Even sitting president's now fall prey to the surveillance state. What rights are left in our civilizational contract? Our immigration policy was once propositional. You come here, you pass certain quality standards, you study and take the citizenship test, and you're in: you get the same rights and privileges as everyone else. Now you don't even do that. Just cross the border and you can get welfare and even vote in many places. The proposition is that if you're on American soil you're an America. That's not a nation, unless we're willing to claim that in 1940 France was visited by some other Frenchmen. 

America's old propositions are dead. The media, academia, even government institutions, all reject classical liberalism. What is left? The last proposition left is economic. Stay in line and you'll be rewarded with comfort and material wealth, plus a fair degree of stability and safety. But we can't assume that's the resting state of a decaying nation. The perks of civilization rest on the backs of nations. When the nations collapse, all the nice propositions disappear with it.

The problem isn't the proposition nation. They can work very nice, even better than traditional nations. For a while. The problem is what follows. What happens when the contract runs out? You're left with an imaginary boundary filled with people of different races, cultures, religions, languages, and politics. Only tyranny can hold such a menagerie together, and even that can't hold forever. Ultimately the system will fall into anarchy and the different interest groups will sort themselves out. We'll likely find ourselves in a much more crude and lamentable place than had our ancestors never adopted the proposition nation to begin with, as noble as the intentions may have been.