Is Trump’s Nationalism “A Betrayal of Patriotism”?

It’s beyond damn time that we straighten out what Donald Trump’s self-proclaimed nationalism means and, more importantly, does not mean.

After Trump declared himself a nationalist during the midterm election campaign, the first front in the denunciation war came from, who else, the elite media. They unleashed a flurry of accusations that the President was employing code language, or the hackneyed term “dog whistle,” to signal his racist followers that he really meant white nationalist, i.e., someone who believes in the superiority of the white race and seeks to make America a lily-white nation.

Imagine what they’d be saying if the black and Hispanic unemployment rates were not at all-time lows.

Lack of Logic

The second front in the establishment war on nationalism came directly from the global elite on Sunday. With Trump looking on, French President Emmanuel Macron chose a solemn ceremony commemorating the 100th anniversary of World War I to declare that “nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism.”

This means that if you are elected to lead America, and you concern yourself first with the condition of America, you are essentially a traitor to your country.

Breathtaking logic.

Macron added, “By saying our interests first … we erase what a nation holds dearest, what gives it life, what gives it grace, and what is essential: its moral values.”

It’s hard to understand what that even means beyond a feeble attempt at soaring rhetoric. But what was clear was a naked verbal attack on Trump and the leaders of many burgeoning nationalist movements throughout Europe which are becoming increasingly attractive to the millions fed up with the European Union’s creeping hegemony.

Trump's Position

Trump has said consistently that, not just him, but all national leaders should be concerned first with the fate of their own countries. By getting their own houses in order - and paying their agreed-upon share for their common defense - they are better able to serve the interests of the community of nations. How does one quarrel with that position?

Trump has always been a nationalist, he had just never used that term to describe himself before.

Trump settled for calling the comments by Macron on both nationalism and earlier, building a European Army to defend against the U.S., China and Russia, “very insulting.”

That brings us back to the matter of twisting “nationalist” into “white nationalist.” This is nothing less than a blood libel. Trump doesn’t care about racial and ethnic identity, only about an individual’s commitment to the American law and creed. He was never accused of racism before he started posing a genuine threat to the national and international order. But he is being vilified because he is the only president with the gall to tackle all of the thorny issues revolving around a thoroughly dysfunctional immigration system riven by political correctness.

No Outrage?

There are so many battlefields on which Democrats refuse to give an inch of ground: a border wall, DACA, chain migration, visa lottery, not to mention the fates of millions of illegals already in our midst.

It is only because we have become so accustomed to these scurrilous attacks that this white nationalism charge has not caused widespread outrage. But when a PBS reporter, Yamiche Alcindor, took up the issue of white nationalism in a political statement disguised as a question (Jim Acosta is hardly the only one) at Trump’s post-election press conference, he called her out as no other president would, characterizing the statement/question as “racist.”

Trump has always been a nationalist, he had just never used that term to describe himself before. But it hardly takes a rocket scientist to figure out that a candidate whose identity revolves around “Make America Great Again” is a nationalist, i.e., someone who promotes the interest of a particular nation.

Historical Context

After forcing a Civil War to keep the nation as one, was Abraham Lincoln not a nationalist? How about Nelson Mandela, who fought for a unified South Africa? Was Mahatma Gandhi, leader of the Indian independence movement, not a nationalist? But the leftist rhetoricians choose to limit the term to the likes of Hitler and Mussolini as if their nationalism resembled that of Lincoln, Mandela, and Gandhi.

Trump is a nationalist because he cares about the country first, not its racial composition and not whether what’s best for the U.S. pleases the rest of the world. Only progressives and their globalist allies circa 2018 would try to turn a legitimate political label into a symbol of hate and betrayal.