The Precedence of the Founders and Ethnopluralism

Clyde Wilson writes about the war of independence and the establishment of 13 free and independent colonies in North America (Chronicles, April 2015). Wilson reminds us that each colony developed its own society.  The debates over the ratification of the U.S. Constitution were often against the centralizing of power and keeping the independence of the states. The best men feared "consolidation." The United States was a plural---the United States are, not the United States is, was the universal usage, as in the Constitution.

Thomas Jefferson was not an advocate of "one nation indivisible," he would not be called a nationalist, it was the principle of self-government that was important to Jefferson. The union could be changed, it was not eternal. Toward the end of his life Jefferson wrote that it would be better for Virginia to secede than to succumb to the centralization pushed by Northern interests.

The states united together did not forfeit their sovereignty, they were not reduced to one and the same people. The union was "a compact between separate communities." An alliance was created in 1776, not really a "nation." When Jefferson looked westward he saw American's creating  a new self-governing commonwealth joined in such a way as they wished.

This precedence, this character, this tone and guiding belief in affirming non-centralized states (but with a lightly protective federalism, and in today's world with a protecting economic nationalism) could be applied to ethnopluralism, and could be done with conservative reform, not radical revolution. We have gradually learned more about real human nature over the years and we see that human nature remains biologically and often culturally kin-centered, ethnocentric, group-selecting, even xenophobic, which means that in our crowded multi-ethnic world we will need to find a way to accommodate ethnopluralism, to keep whatever peace and harmony is possible between humans.

Establishing, or reestablishing, virtual ethnostates in the United States, where distinct ethnic cultures can thrive and evolve as they wish will probably happen anyway as multicultural empires always break back down into ethnostates. It would be better to do this consciously, rationally, rather than by way of civil war, given human nature---and our Constitution, with its separation of powers and states, could accommodate a natural and moral ethnopluralism if we would choose to do so.