"Conservatism" is No Longer Enough

A provocative and worthy piece at The American Mind, by Glenn Ellmers.

Fewer are willing to take the next step and accept that most people living in the United States today—certainly more than half—are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term.

I don’t just mean the millions of illegal immigrants. Obviously, those foreigners who have bypassed the regular process for entering our country, and probably will never assimilate to our language and culture, are—politically as well as legally—aliens. I’m really referring to the many native-born people—some of whose families have been here since the Mayflower—who may technically be citizens of the United States but are no longer (if they ever were) Americans. They do not believe in, live by, or even like the principles, traditions, and ideals that until recently defined America as a nation and as a people. It is not obvious what we should call these citizen-aliens, these non-American Americans; but they are something else.

That's a very grave problem statement. Is it just? I wonder about the percentage -- "certainly more than half" may be overstating the numbers -- but it is certainly true of some percentage. Percentages aside, too, it seems to be true especially of the part that occupies all the seats of power: in government, both elected and the bureaucracy; in corporations; in the media, to include news, social media, and entertainment; and, at the moment at least, even in top positions of the military.