(RNS) — On Sunday, at Turning Point USA’s annual AmericaFest, JD Vance began his closing remarks with a message of inclusion. Foreswearing “endless, self-defeating purity tests,” he promised to fight alongside “all of you” to “defend the country that we so dearly love.” He and President Donald Trump, he said, “don’t care if you’re white or black, rich or poor, young or old, rural or urban, controversial or a little bit boring or somewhere in between.”
Which was his way of saying that he would not be issuing any criticism of the right-wing antisemites and their enablers who, in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, have tumbled MAGAworld into civil war. Specifically, he was saying Ben Shapiro and his ilk are wrong to call for Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson and their ilk to be kicked out of the movement.
Meanwhile, the civil war rumbles on.
In a New York Times opinion piece, Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy denounced the “rapidly ascendent” view on the right that the purest American identity is based on “lineage, blood and soil.” Ramaswamy described how his own social media feeds “are littered with hundreds of slurs, most from accounts that I don’t recognize, about ‘pajeets’” and calls to deport him “back to India.” (He is a native-born U.S. citizen.)
Similarly, the conservative law professor Josh Blackman has posted his letter of resignation as senior editor of the Heritage Foundation’s multi-authored Guide to the Constitution. Addressing Heritage President Kevin Rogers, who declared undying support for Carlson after the talk-show host gave Fuentes a friendly interview in October, Blackman, who is Jewish, wrote, “Your initial remarks were indefensible. Your apology was underwhelming. And the lack of any meaningful followup over the past three months has been telling. For reasons only you know, you aligned the Heritage Foundation with the rising tide of antisemitism on the right.”
It is noteworthy that Vance, in his listing of demographic dualities who are all one in MAGA, did not include a religious pairing. It’s hard to believe that the omission was not on purpose.
The line in his speech that drew the greatest applause was, “The only thing that has truly served as an anchor of the United States of America is that we have been, and by the grace of God, we always will be, a Christian nation.” What followed by way of justifying his “Christian nation” claim — anticipating the media to twist it — was a tissue of half-truths, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
“I’m not saying you have to be a Christian to be an American,” he allowed. “I’m saying something simpler and truer.” As if there was something true about saying that. And exactly what was simpler and truer? “Christianity is America’s creed.” Really?
To go on to claim that “our country’s major debates have always centered on how we could best, as a people, please God” is nonsense. The point was not to say something simple and true, but to enable Turning Point USA’s Christian audience to come away assured they have the bragging rights in America, that those of other faiths are just the beneficiaries of a civilization that is not theirs.
In 1790, President George Washington told the Hebrew congregation of Newport, “It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights.” In essence, Vance was telling AmericaFest the opposite.