The Case for Christian Nationalism
Epilogue: Now What? | IV. Dominion (Part 2)
Previously:
There is certainly an unhealthy individualism, either the fake expressivist variety or the libertarian version that denies pre-political ties and unchosen bonds… The collectivist fear of individualism is that it isolates man from man or sets people in destructive opposition. But this falsely assumes that individuals pursuing mastery cannot spontaneously generate hierarchy. In such hierarchies, skills are synchronized under authority for a common mission.1
While Wolfe derides the left-wing form of collectivism, given what else he has written about naturally occurring aristocratic hierarchies, corporate synchronization of varying levels of ability in labor would likely not be a pure meritocracy, under his system. Though he does not explicitly state it here, he already promoted the ultimate top-down ends of his nation, when he stated that Christian Nationalism creates a “redundant web of obligation that orders everything ultimately to the national good” (emphasis mine).2 Given these national obligations, corporate hierarchies would likely function closer to the authoritarian economic model of National Syndicalism, the belief that individual productivity is best ordered by a series of hierarchical organizations that funnel into top-down, state control. Can it be believed that, under theocratic Caesearism, one could ascend to the status of synchronizer of labor for the common mission without being a member of good standing in the state church, much like some nations require major business owners to be members of the ruling party?
No one is a man among men, but a person among persons; and your standing among others is not because of something you’ve achieved but simply by virtue of the fact of existence, or by being superior at congratulating everyone for their existence or empathizing with another’s “trauma.”3
The amount of hyperbolic social grievance expressed through this section is no better than what one is likely to hear about “capitalist imperialism” at a Democratic Socialists of America convention. We still live in a world that requires goods and services for human sustenance, and those goods and services are provided by skilled labor, not by “congratulating everyone”. How many people have read Wolfe’s book and agree with this premise, because they are actually forced to “empathize with another’s ‘trauma’” as a regular work task? This type of extreme framing of, and overreaction to, leftist excess does not solve the issue, it only creates an equally excessive, rightist counter-option. Both sides strawman and feed off of each other, further polarizing and escalating tensions, until a breaking point is reached.
Wolfe’s definition of the American dream as “each person’s striving can attain him a respectable place among fellow Americans” and “recognition as a man among men”4 is quite inaccurate. The dream has always been primarily economic, in that one’s striving eventually moves him up one rung in the economic ladder, allowing his children to start life in a slightly better station, moving themselves up another rung, and so on. This is still happening, especially within immigrant communities; it is anything but “degrading and futile in most areas of the economy,” and most Americans do not work for “woke corporations” that require they adopt ideologies of “self-loathing and self-incrimination.”5 These companies exist, and conservative Christians must be be increasingly judicious about evangelizing in the workplace (perhaps rightly), but Wolfe is exaggerating the issue to engender an emotional, knee-jerk reaction from the reader. Only a Christian brought to an unnecessary fight-or-flight state can be convinced to “reject the talk of ‘universal dignity’”6, a core Christian principle grounded upon the existence of God’s image in every human being.
Next:
Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2022), 465.
Ibid., 13.
Ibid., 466.
Ibid., 466.
Ibid., 467.
Ibid., 467.