OPINIONSrnGlad To Be of Usernby Samuel Francisrn”Satiate with power, of fame and wealth possessed,rnA nation grows too glorious to be blest;rnConspicuous made, she stands the mark of all.rnAnd foes join foes to triumph in her fall.”rn—George Crabbe, ThelibraurnIrnThe Next American Nation:rnThe New Nationahsm and thernFourth American Revolutionrnby Michael bindrnNew York The Free Press;rn436 pp., $23.00rnn the last car, Michael Lind hasrnemerged as the new wunderkind ofrnAmerican political discussion. He wasrnthe subject of a full profile in the WashingtonrnPost’s Style section last summer,rnand Newsweek’s July 31 cover story onrnthe “oerclass” was drawn on a conceptrncentral to the book under review here.rnThe most noticeable of his many articlesrnin the last vear or so was probably hisrnanalysis in the New York Review of Booksrnof the writings of Pat Robertson, inrnwhich he not onh’ argued that Robertsonrnand his Christian Coalition were indeedrnanti-Semites, as the Anti-Defamationrnl>eague of B’nai B’rith has claimed, butrnrenounced his own earlier allegiance tornthe political right for failing to follow hisrnlead in repudiating Robertson’s supposedrnhidden anti-Semitic and homophobicrnagenda. The self-abasing apologeticrnthat the Coalition’s Ralph Reedrnga’e before the League shortly afterwardrnma hax’c been precipitated by this article.rnLind’s anaKsis of Robertson wasrnimmensely useful to the Anti-DefamationrnLeague’s attack on the ChristianrnCoalition, and his article appeared justrnin time to prevent the ADL’s own ammunitionrnfrom blowing up in its face.rnBut it is The Next American NationrnSamuel Francis is a nationally syndicatedrncolumnist and a contributing editor tornChronicles.rnthat is so far the capstone of Lind’s reputation.rnContrary to the neoconservati’ernchampions of what he calls “democraticrnuniversalism” and American “exceptionalism,”rnand consistent with argumentsrnmade in Chronicles over the last decade,rnLind argues for the existence of a realrnAmerican nation, defined mainh’ by arncommon culture and language, ratherrnthan by race or adherence to a creed ofrnuniversal rights. His case for a commonrnnationality also involves a critique ofrncontemporary multiculturalism, whichrnrejects a common nationality as a maskrnfor Eurocentric racial and cultural hegemony.rnNevertheless, while recognizing thernfact of a common nationality throughoutrnAmerican history, Lind’s Americanrnpast is a succession of three regimes orrn”republics” that express the interests andrnvalues of the different population strainsrnand classes that created them. Thern”First Republic,” which he calls “Anglo-rnAmerica,” persisted from the adoptionrnof the Constitution to the Civil War andrnreflected the power of its largely Anglo-rnSaxon or “Anglo-Cermanic” people.rnThe “Second Republic,” or “Euro-rnAmerica,” flourished from the Civil Warrnto the civil rights era of the 1960’s andrnrepresented the dominance of a non-rnAnglo-Germanic, but still European,rnpopulation. The “Third Republic,” orrn”Multicultural America.” is the regimernin which we now find ourselves, as massrnnon-European immigration and thernemergence of nonwhite racial, cultural,rnand political consciousness forcernchanges in the distribution of power andrnwealth, as well as in national culturalrnsymbolism.rnEach of these eras or republics is distinguishedrnby a particular ruling class—rnthe first by its largely British-descendedrnagrarian and mercantile elites that sawrnthemselves as the heirs to ancient Anglo-rnSaxon and Cermanic traditions of republicanrnliberty; the second by its industrialrncapitalist elite that depended onrnmass labor and, therefore, mass Europeanrnimmigration; and the third by whatrnLind calls, in a term d’art he has alreadyrnpopularized, “the overclass.” Each republicrnwas also characterized by “its ownrnconsensus, its own threefold nationalrnJANUARY 1996/27rnrnrn