The Phantom Menace

First it was MAGA—now it's "Christian nationalism"

Natural rights? The horror!

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If you were following the news last week, this bombshell story by Politico’s Heidi Przybyla and Alex Ward no doubt caught your eye: Christian nationalists linked to Donald Trump are plotting to impose their sinister ideology on “our democracy”:

An influential think tank close to Donald Trump is developing plans to infuse Christian nationalist ideas in his administration should the former president return to power, according to documents obtained by Politico.

Spearheading the effort is Russell Vought, who served as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget during his first term and has remained close to him. Vought, who is frequently cited as a potential chief of staff in a second Trump White House, is president of The Center for Renewing America think tank, a leading group in a conservative consortium preparing for a second Trump term.

But what could these “Christian nationalist” ideas be? In a subsequent interview on MSNBC, Przybyla explained:

“The thing that unites them as Christian nationalists—not Christians by the way, because ‘Christian nationalist’ is very different—is that they believe that our rights as Americans, as all human beings, don’t come from any earthly authority. They don’t come from Congress. They don’t come from the Supreme Court. They come from God.”

Excuse me?

Heidi Przybyla has a bachelor's degree in international affairs and German from the James Madison College at Michigan State University. Butt her education must have stopped short of the history of the American founding, because she seems unacquainted with the Declaration of Independence, which states:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

This level of cluelessness is only to be expected from a pair of dim-bulb leftie journalists who don’t much about history but do know that all that God stuff is dangerous.

But even leaving the Creator out of it, the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount are serviceable templates for the construction of a just and moral society—far more so than Das Kapital or the Port Huron Statement. Ward and Przybyla can’t see that. To them, government is the Creator, bestowing rights and privileges on the proles. That’s good progressive dogma, but it doesn’t exactly track with the principles of the American founding.

But for all the heavy breathing in the background of Ward and Przybyla’s article, it’s curiously light on substance. Christian nationalist headquarters is said to be located at The Center for Renewing America, a conservative think tank. Its president, Russell Vought, served in the Trump Administration as Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and has been mentioned as possible White House chief of staff if Trump wins a second term. We’re told that “Trump allies” are plotting to impose Christian nationalism on America after their man is reelected. But it turns out that none of these people are associated with Trump’s reelection campaign, and that “The documents obtained by Politico do not outline specific Christian nationalist policies.” Oh.

Given the background and character of Donald J. Trump, it seems very unlikely that he’d seek to impose Christian nationalism on America if elected this year. And by the way, what is Christian nationalism? Ward and Przybyla’s article make much of the fact that it’s based on the doctrine of natural rights or, if you prefer, God-given rights. But as noted above, that doctrine is embedded in America’s founding document and in the two and a half centuries since the Declaration of Independence was signed, no one has come up with a better idea. Even if you don’t believe in God, your rights are inseparable from you; no president, governor, legislator or bureaucrat, acting arbitrarily, can take them away.

But arbitrary government is progressivism’s beau ideal: the ability to get things done for the collective without all the fuss and bother of respecting people’s rights.

So much, then, for the phantom menace of Christian nationalism. It’s really just progressives, indulging their anti-Christian bigotry under the cover of defending “our democracy.” For when Dostoevsky is quoted to them, the comrades nod in approval of the idea that without God, everything is permitted. They wouldn’t have it any other way.