The attack on so-called ‘Christian nationalists’ is more nefarious than you realize

A Politico reporter appearing on MSNBC garnered headlines because she said that (gasp!) so-called “Christian nationalists” believe that our rights come from God and not from the government. Those Christian beliefs, of course, align perfectly with Enlightenment thinking and the magnificent introduction to the Declaration of Independence. Many have seen her statement as a way to empower government. But the real stinger is hidden in the word “nationalism.” For the left, that’s code for Hitler. She just called everyone who believes in natural rights “Hitler.”

According to Heidi Przybyla, a Politico reporter, America is under attack from “Christian nationalists”:

The thing that unites them as Christian nationalists, not Christians because Christian nationalists are very different, is that they believe that our rights as Americans and as all human beings do not come from any Earthly authority. They don’t come from Congress, from the Supreme Court, they come from God,” she explained. “The problem with that is that they are determining, men, are determining what God is telling them.”

As Silvio Canto pointed out just today, what these “Christian nationalists” believe aligns perfectly with our Declaration of Independence. Rights that come from God are inherent in every human being. The rights she wants—those from human institutions—are merely privileges. What the government giveth, the government can taketh away.

Image: Heidi Przybyla. X screen grab.

In other words, Przybyla is just a garden-variety leftist.

What’s more concerning is the word “nationalist.” That’s the same word Rob Reiner uses in his dismally performing “God and Country.” The headlines from reports about the movie tell it all. Here’s just a sampling (emphasis added):

• Washington Post: ‘God & Country’ film spotlights Christian nationalism’s threat to democracy
• The Hollywood Reporter: Rob Reiner Takes on Christian Nationalism Threat in ‘God & Country’ Trailer
• Axios: First look: Film dives into threats of Christian nationalism

To date, the movie has been a massive flop. Despite the media’s approval, it had a $38,000 opening, which is impressively awful.

The issue, though, isn’t whether anyone sees the movie. The issue is the word “nationalism.”  That’s the real smear.

At a dictionary level, “nationalism” is an unobjectionable word about people in a geographic region coming together for a common cause:

spirit or aspirations common to the whole of a nation:

He describes how the intense and unconquerable nationalism of India’s hundreds of millions contributed to the decline of the British empire.

devotion and loyalty to one’s own country; patriotism:

The promotion of a healthy nationalism is part of the responsibility of the leaders of a newly independent, diverse nation.

However, on the left, while it may be good for non-white people to have national aspirations, it’s a very bad thing when white people do it.

I learned that when I had a Swedish exchange student living with us for a year. The first thing he did on his arrival was pin a Swedish flag on his wall. I thought it was nice. He—a good leftist—explained that it made him a renegade. Growing up, displaying a flag that showed pride in one’s nation was analogous to being…Hitler. On the left, white people and patriotism are Hitlerism.

But, of course, nationalism and patriotism have nothing to do with a megalomaniac who inspires his people to set out on a course of genocide and world domination. That was Germany’s peculiar spiritual corruption when its loss in WWI led to Germany’s economic and cultural collapse.

For leftists, who always conveniently forget that Hitler was a socialist, the answer to Hitlerism/nationalism is globalism. If we become true globalists (Marx’s “workers of the world unite”), world domination is irrelevant (“We are the world”), and genocide cannot happen.

That’s nonsense, of course. The globalist response to Hamas’s genocidal attack on Israel (“You go, guys!”) shows that globalism simply puts evil on steroids. Big government is a force multiplier. World government is a nuclear force multiplier.

In the 1980s, the left didn’t challenge the phrase “Moral Majority.” Leftists found it repugnant, so they didn’t realize that ordinary Americans liked the idea of morality, especially after the debauchery of the 1960s and 1970s.

This time around, though, leftists are making sure to own the language. So, no matter how silly Przybyla sounds or how badly the box office for Rob Reiner’s movie, take what they’re doing very seriously because they’re aggressively shifting the Overton window for appropriate political discourse about Christianity itself. It’s no longer a religion; it’s Naziism.