little or nothing even if they had the power. As long as the dominantrnor majority national group (namely, European-Americans)rnremains unable to articulate its own national identity andrnconsciousness and unwilling to assert its exclusive right to its nationalrnterritory and explicitly reject the legitimacy of other nationsrnto form within its territory, then tlie subnations will encounterrnno significant political obstacle to exploiting the largerrnnation-state for their own purposes. Those purposes for thernmost part would not reach beyond the usual fruits of politicalrnconflict in the soft managerial states of the Western world: morernpolitical appointments for members of the particular group,rnmore subsidies and privileges for the group, more acknowledgmentrnof their status as “victims” of the supine majority group,rnetc. But the essential premise of this kind of intra-nationalistrnpolitics is that the supine majority not become militant.rnIf the majority (which the Euro-American population willrncease to be in the middle of the next century) should show signsrnof repossessing its own nation and reviving its own national consciousness,rnthen the subgroups could no longer expect to gainrnpolitical advantages by playing politics within the large nationalrnframework. They would then have an incentive to embarkrnon a “Balkanization” or separatist or secessionist strategy, evenrnthough they might lack the power to enforce it. The likely resultrnwould then be internal war between the racial-nationalrngroups, or at least a tense compromise by which some groupsrncould conhnue to get some rewards from the political systemrnbut not all that they would like.rnTo a large extent, this future is already upon us, and it isrnhardly surprising given the brutal reality of ethnic, racial,rnand national conflicts in world history. The last 30 years in thernUnited States and Western Europe have largely been an era ofrnillusions, in which the liberal, egalitarian, integrationist idealrnarticulated by Martin Luther King, Jr.—to judge people not byrnthe color of their skin but by the content of their character—hasrnprevailed in public rhetoric, if not in actual law and practice,rnhi fact, it is doubtful that very many people ever really believedrnKing’s words, and certainly those who collaborated with Kingrnhave consistently supported the most blatant racial privilegesrnfor their own group even as they deny the legitimacy of suchrnprivileges to other groups. Race, in other words, has returnedrn(if, indeed, it ever departed at all) and now claims to be the veryrnfoundation of nationality and group identity.rnrhe return of race and the consequent emergence of incipientrnracial nations within the old nation is only one indicationrnthat the political framework of the nation may itself be changing.rnWhereas the old framework, at least in ideological terms,rncontained a contest between a right committed to a small, lowcostrnstate and a left committed to a large, active, and high-costrnstate, the contest in the future is more likely to determinernwhether there is a larger national unity at all or whether nationalrnunity should yield to a hansnational framework. The politicalrnand ideological lines of division over transnational issues arernalready considerably blurred, with Newt Gingrich and BillrnClinton allying to support NAFTA, the World Trade Organization,rnincreased global free frade, foreign aid, continuous militaryrnintervention for ostensibly alfruistic causes, IMF frinding,rnetc., while Pat Buchanan, Ross Perot, Ralph Nader, and a fragilernbut growing coalition of Republicans and Democrats inrnCongress collaborate to oppose them. While globalists agreernon ethnic and cultural issues (they are pro-immigration andrnpro-affirmative action, egalitarian and universalist in principlernbut supportive of anti-white racial privilege in practice),rnthe nationalists have yet to come to a consensus on suchrnissues.rnNevertheless, the lines of politics are increasingly clear. Inrnplace of a politics that debates over the size, cost, scope, andrnscale of the state, there will be a politics concerned withrnwhether there will be a nation. This is in fact what former NationalrnReview editors John O’Sullivan and Peter Brimelow haverncalled the “national question,” and conflict over it is likely to bernthe main political issue of the next half-century. It can easilyrnsubsume many of the religious-moral issues that now animaternthe religious right, and it obviously aligns with the racial-nationalrnidentities now emerging. Whites may end up largely opposingrntransnationalism, and non-whites, who have hithertornopposed high rates of immigration, may come to support thernfransnationalist agenda, at least as a means of weakening the nationalrnvigor of the dominant state.rnThe friture of American politics, then, is likely to be one inrnwhich the lines of division and conflict are between those whornwant the nation to persist as John Jay characterized it in 1787rnand those who want it to vanish, either into the fransnationalrnhaze of the New World Order or into the racial-national fragmentsrnthat can manipulate and exploit its shell. Since the mainrnobstacle to both parts of the anti-national side is tlie dominancernof the core ethnic group of the old nation, both the transnationalistsrnand the racial-nationalists share an interest in ensuringrnthat the core ceases to be the core (i.e., is demographicallyrnmarginalized by immigration), ceases to possess a consciousnessrnthat can distinguish its identity and interests (i.e., is punished,rnosttacized, and demonized for its “racism”), and ceasesrnto exercise group power (i.e., is dislodged from conttol of thernculttiral and political instittitions it created and has historicallyrncontrolled). The national question, then, almost necessarilyrnimplies the racial question, and however limited race may be asrna basis for social and political unity, it cannot be escaped orrnavoided as an element in national-political conflicts.rnWhat that means, however, is that white Americans will increasinglyrnfind themselves ttapped between a ttansnationalismrndriven from above, by the economic interests and cultural preferencesrnof elites, and a racial nationalism (or several differentrnracial nationalisms) driven from below, by the group interestsrnand identities of adversarial ethnicities. While the alliance betweenrnthe fransnationalists and the anti-white racial nationalistsrnmay be fragile, its very existence could encourage an intensificationrnof Euro-American unity. If such an intensification occursrnbefore European-Americans become a minority in thernUnited States in the middle of the next cenfriry, the resultantrnnationalist movement could emerge as the most important andrnpowerful political force of the next hundred years.rnThe American frittire, then, is likely to be rather more complicatedrnthan one of simple fragmentation, internal militaryrnconflict, or mere chaos, let alone the friumph of the fast-food,rnshopping mall, more-growth-forever utopia slobbered over byrnneoconservatives and libertarian cultists. The modernizationrnthat such utopianism presupposes has already damaged the nationalrnand cultural homogeneity of the United States enough tornrender questionable the survival of the nation that John Jay described.rnYet even if the historic American nation expires, otherrnnations will survive it, and one of those survivors may even berndescended from the same ancestors as the old nation that nowrnfaces extinction.rnJANUARY 1999/23rnrnrn