Post-Utopian Ethnopluralism

Paleoconservative Chilton Williamson Jr. wrote another good column (Chronicles Sept. 2016) on how liberalism is no longer capable of controlling, liberally, the liberal society for which it is responsible. But then Williamson goes on to say that the alternative to post-racial politics is not white or black identitarian politics, it is a “post-Utopian politics” in the context of post-liberal politics, whatever that means.

That doesn't do it for me, because unless there can be a constitutional separation of powers and states into an ethnopluralism of ethnostates---that is, an “identitarian” solution within our constitutional tradition of the separation of powers and states---any post-Utopian dream is only another kind of Utopianism. Ethnopluralism harmonizes with real human nature, which remains kin-centered, gender defined, age-graded, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, and religious-making, with group-selection as the primary unit of successful selection.

Ethnopluralism follows the deepest kind of conservatism, and it can be done legally and constitutionally if we have the wisdom and will to do so. If we cannot unpack and transform our liberal politics toward an ethnopluralism of ethnostates, well protected by federalism, then Williamson's fear of the “tyranny that has followed historically on the collapse of democratic regimes” will probably take place. I think we can do it, but it will require more intellectual and political courage than conservatism has been showing. Those who love America as I do want to see a legal, constitutional, and conservative transformation, not radical revolution.