Why J.D. Vance and the MAGA GOP does not represent the true idea of America and our core values.

What is the idea of America, the core of the American identity?

Trump, Vance, and the GOP say they're all about patriotism.

In fact, they're promoting a white Christian identity form of nationalism, which is an entirely

different thing, a dark, dangerous, and deadly thing, incompatible with our

founder's idea of America.

French president of Manuel Macron got it right when he recently said patriotism is the act

exact opposite of nationalism.

He added,

nationalism is a betrayal.

By pursuing our own interests first with no regard to others,

we erase the very thing that a nation holds most precious,

that which gives it life and makes it great, its moral values.

The French having experienced the horrors created by Hitler's shifting Germany from patriotism to nationalism in the 1930s.

Understand this difference well.

The late French President Charles de Gaulle put it clearly.

Patriotism, he wrote, is when love of your own people comes first, nationalism, when hate for people

other than your own comes first.

President Abraham Lincoln who steered America to victory against the white Christian nationalist

Confederate movement made clear his embrace of patriotism, the idea of America, and his rejection

of white Christian nationalism in his Gettysburg address.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

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