identity politics Archives - Our Great Nation

When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, he said he wanted to “Make America great again.” But during his presidency and that of his successor, Joe Biden, neither party has done much to solve our country’s biggest problems. Working-class Americans are falling further and further behind. Illegal immigration is still out of control. Crime is on the rise, and the quality of public education is bad and getting worse. Perhaps most importantly, Americans are more divided now by politics and the “culture war” than at any time since the Civil War.

***Our Banner in the Sky*** by Frederic Edwin Church, 1861 (cropped)

Most people across the political spectrum would probably agree that America is in decline and that liberals and conservatives hate each other. Do we really have to be so divided, or are there certain things that a solid majority of Americans should be able to agree upon? If so, we have a patriotic duty to build a political movement bringing people together around these issues and ideals.

I call this the “American Renewal Movement.” I believe it’s the big-picture framing we need to move beyond the poisonous politics of the present day. Americans have been united before — together we built one of the greatest countries in the world. By looking to what has united our nation in the past, we can build a better future.

The American Renewal Movement Facebook page says, quite simply, that it’s about “Standing up for basic American values: Democracy, freedom, the rule of law, civic virtue and ethics.” I haven’t published anything there since March and haven’t made any efforts yet to promote it — I was planning to leave the page dormant until next year — but during the past six months it has somehow grown from 700 to 3,700 followers.

This tells me there’s a hunger out there for a better political philosophy than what most politicians are currently promoting. Unfortunately, standing up for basic American values is not high on the list of priorities of either Democrats or Republicans nowadays. Former president Trump and his supporters spout endless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, and President Biden and his party pander to liberal activists on cultural issues that, under the U.S. Constitution, are supposed to be left to state and local governments to decide for their own people.

In January 2023, I plan to start publishing lots of content and spreading the word about the American Renewal Movement that I envision. In anticipation of the active launch of the project, I’d like to take a few moments to explain its purpose — especially for the benefit of all the new people who have liked and followed it on social media.

Last weekend, an organization called Principles First held a summit in Washington, D.C., which was attended by over 400 people. The conference brought together a wide range of people who could generally be considered to represent the center-right of today’s American political spectrum: Republicans, independents, and even a few Democrats who think of themselves as at least somewhat “conservative” but who oppose Donald Trump and his toxic brand of politics.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) giving keynote address

I attended this two-day event because as an independent and former Democrat who rejects both Trumpism as well as the woke left that has increasingly taken over the Democratic Party, I wanted to find out if a center-right movement could feel like my new political home. I also wanted to gauge the strengths and weaknesses of the efforts underway to form a meaningful political coalition to oppose Trump and his disciples in upcoming election cycles, either from within the Republican Party or through the creation of a centrist third party or trans-partisan alliance.

Overall, I found the Principles First Summit to be substantive, engaging, and sometimes inspiring in its tone and content. The group that organized it, as well as other organizations represented, seemingly contain much of the seeds that will be necessary for the growth of a powerful grassroots movement to present a positive vision for America — a broadly inclusive political alternative to compete with the extreme woke Democrats and Trumpist Republicans.

At the same time, it became clear to me that much more work needs to be done, and that voices such as my own, who come out of the classically liberal populist Democratic tradition, are essential for such a movement to fully appreciate what is happening in American politics today and to formulate the strategies necessary to move beyond the divisive ideologies that increasingly dominate our country’s two major political parties.