Terms
Transcript
This transcript:
- Was machine generated.
- Has not been checked for errors.
- May not be entirely accurate.
So, as ever on the right, there has been a great deal of discussion over the issues of race, ethnicity, nation, nationalism, and related matters.
And so I want to go over these issues to make sure that people understand what is actually being said when these terms are used, what is sometimes not being said, what is being deliberately misstated, etc.
And so it is important to go over exactly what these terms truly mean, so that you know when someone uses them to mean something else, he is attempting to deceive you.
And so, of course, we start with race.
The second sense of the word race, the first, of course, just meaning running, is a group of people descended from a common ancestor or a class of persons allied by common ancestry.
Those two things, of course, mean the same thing.
It came to us through French, and earlier, most likely, through Italian, ultimately from Latin, the Latin being radix, root.
Now, some modern etymologists and linguists will attempt to say that it did not come from radix, that it has no connection to that.
I would hope most of you can see through that for what it is.
It's an attempt at deception.
It is an attempt to deny the connection here.
What does the term mean?
It means people of a common stock.
Well, what does that mean?
People of a common root, people with a common ancestor.
And so that is what race means.
It means people of the same blood.
But what is a nation?
Well, nation comes from us, ultimately, from Proto-Indo-European, the root being gene, which means give birth or beget.
Now, some may be wondering, how do we get from gene to nation?
Because those words are rather different.
It's true.
They are different in form, but it really takes two steps to see how we get from gene to nation.
And so it comes to us through Latin, before that, from Old Latin.
Old Latin would be gnasci, and that is be born, G-N-A-S-C-I. It drops the G in Latin, becomes gnasci, be born, also natus, nationem, all of these words related to birth.
And so, of course, you can see the connection there, because if you are related to someone by blood, ultimately that means birth.
That is the only way you can be related to someone by blood, is by birth, ultimately.
And so, nation and race are very closely related terms.
They are not identical terms, and they are not identical for this reason.
Race refers specifically to the people of common ancestry, those of the same blood.
Nation, in English, refers to those of common blood living in a certain territory.
And so it is both of those things.
Nation is blood and soil.
So nation is race plus territory.
That is the actual meaning of nation.
And so, for instance, those who will argue that you have a nation made up of different groups are just making an incoherent argument.
That is not a nation, because a nation, definitionally, is a race, a group of common blood, plus a territory, soil.
And so a bunch of groups living together in a common territory, who do not share blood, is not a nation.
That is a bizarre or a civil war, is what that is.
There is another term that is worth mentioning.
I mentioned it in the opening, as it were.
And that is ethnicity.
Ethnicity means the same thing as race.
This is just coming to us from Greek instead of from Latin.
This is particularly salient to Christians, because some of you will already have recognized the Greek word underlying ethnicity, because it's very similar.
It is ethnos, ethne in the plural.
Ethnos just means nation, or race, or people.
Hence, ethnicity and race are, again, identical.
In the Septuagint, which is to say the Greek translation of the Old Testament, this is translating goi or goyim, which is Hebrew for nation or race.
I would hope you are seeing a theme here.
And so when someone speaks to you about ethnicity, and tries to distinguish it from race, do not let him do that, because ethnicity and race are identical, in a somewhat similar fashion to sex and gender.
Now, in the modern usage, the left, which is to say Marxists, of course, have attempted to make this ambiguous, to disconnect these terms.
Sex is the biological reality of male or female, man or woman.
Gender is the expressed reality of the biological reality.
And so men are masculine, women are feminine.
Male and masculine are the same thing.
They express different aspects of the reality of being a biological male, of being XY.
Female and feminine and woman are expressing different aspects of the reality of being XX, of being a biological woman.
The terms are essentially identical.
They just addressed different parts of the reality.
Same thing for race and ethnicity.
I'll get into that another time, perhaps.
But they are slightly different in sense, but they do not express, they do not refer, to different realities.
If you say someone is German, that is both his race and his ethnicity.
They are the same thing.
So I am, although it does get a little more complicated when you speak of the United States, and I'll get into that now.
The reason it gets a little more complicated for the United States, and this is just, this is how nations form.
Because you can create a new nation.
The nations are not set.
We've seen new nations created in history.
For instance, those who stepped off the ark, three males who would go on to found a number of nations.
Noah did not have any more children, so he didn't found any more nations.
He, of course, is the father of all of them, because he was the father of all three of the men who went on to form nations.
In order of their birth, Japheth, Shem, and Ham.
Japheth is Europe.
His sons colonized Europe, and the upper fringe of the African continent, which is to say, they ringed the Mediterranean.
Because, of course, you have the Sahara between.
You have that border between the Mediterranean rim and the rest of the African continent.
You have the sons of Shem, form the Middle East, and as stated, the sons of Ham, of course, then are Africa.
Asia is mostly sons of Shem.
And so the United States is a Japhethitic nation.
We are descended from Japheth.
But we are not descended from only one of his sons or grandsons, because, of course, the table of nations in Genesis lists his sons and grandsons, who went on to form the various nations and tribes in Europe.
And so, for instance, I am German, which is to say, I am a son of Ashkenaz, who was a son of Gomer, who was a son of Japheth.
The United States is descended mostly from Anglo-Saxons.
And so largely that would be those from what is now the UK and some from Western Europe.
All sons of Japheth, but not all from the same nation.
Now, race can refer to a smaller or a larger group.
And so, for instance, it is not wrong to refer to all of mankind as the race of Adam, or really you could say the race of Noah, because there was a bottleneck there, and we are all descended from Noah.
But it is misleading, it is wrong, it is deception when you attempt to conflate the fact that we are all descended from Adam and attempt to then argue that we are all one race.
Because when someone advances that argument, he is using the word race in two different senses.
There is the overarching sense of descended from Adam, but then there is the more concrete sense of French, or German, or Polish, or Italian, or what have you, American.
When we speak of race in the modern context, we almost always mean that more restricted sense.
And so the American race is Western European, it is Anglo-Saxon in origin.
That is what America, the nation, is.
Now, you have to distinguish nation and country.
The country is the political entity.
Those may very well be the same in some cases.
These days, much less so, historically much more so.
And so the United States is a political entity.
The American nation is a racial entity.
These are not identical.
And so it is very possible to be a staunch nationalist, to support the American nation, and yet oppose just as vehemently the political entity known as the United States.
For some Christians, of course, this will bring up Romans 13 and other such places where you are to submit to rightful authority.
That is a discussion for another time.
However, very briefly, it is worth mentioning that Romans 13 is polemical.
So read it with that eye.
Read it with that lens in mind.
This is not an absolute command.
You do not submit to all authority.
There is rightful and there is wrongful authority.
Perhaps eventually I will get around to the Magdeburg Confession, which gives a thorough Christian treatment of when we are to submit to authority and when we are to, in fact, rebel.
Because not all authority is rightful, and Christians are not to blindly submit to all authority.
But anyway, back to the issue at hand.
We have now gone through the terms.
And so the overall point, the real thing that I want to drive home is that terms matter, and that terms have meanings, and the meanings matter.
You cannot use whatever term you want to mean whatever you want.
If I want you to get me a glass of water and I ask you for a goat, the odds of my receiving a glass of water are probably fairly slim.
These things have meaning.
It is important to use them with the meaning they have in mind, to use them correctly.
Now, our adversaries are very fond of redefining terms.
They always have been, because Satan is a liar, and so are all of his children.
Do not let them do that.
Insist on using the actual sense of the terms.
If they will not engage with the actual sense of the terms, they are engaging in bad faith.
Do not engage with them.
That is a categorical prohibition.
Those who are exceptions will know it.
Good odds you are not.
Do not engage with those who are engaging in bad faith, and refuse to use the actual sense of the terms that are necessary to have the debate.
And so, in summary, the terms are these.
Race is blood.
It is a group of people of common descent, those who have a common ancestor.
Nation is blood, which is to say race, and soil, which is to say territory.
It is the combination of those two things.
Ethnicity is, for basically all intents and purposes, identical to race.
These terms are vitally important to politics in the United States and in the larger Western world right now.
Nationalism is the way forward.
It is the only godly ideology for government to have when it comes to these issues.
And without these terms, you cannot meaningfully discuss nationalism and what you mean by nationalism.
Civic nationalism, so-called, is not a thing.
That is a cult.
That is idolatry.
That is worship of, in the U.S. context, the Constitution.
That is not a real political ideology.
That is a losing strategy.
It's nonsense.
Ultimately, it is wicked and destructive, but that is a discussion, perhaps, for another day.
We've now gone over the terms— race, nation, ethnicity— what the terms mean, why they're important, and what you should do and what you should not do with them.
Engage with them according to their actual definitions.
Be willing to engage with those who use the actual definitions.
Do not engage with those who engage in bad faith.
Which is to say, those who pervert the terms and refuse to use them according to their actual meanings.
Ultimately, we will win this conflict.
But we will not win it by engaging on the enemy's terms.
We will win by forcing them to engage on our terms.
