A vintage but truly evergreen Van der Leun post I missed when it first appeared back in 2010, found now via WRSA.

I don’t know about you, but I do not consider myself either a “Conservative” or a “Republican” or a member of the “Alt-Right.” Never have. Never will. I consider myself to be one thing and one thing only:

I AM AN AMERICAN.

Always have been.

Always will be.

Nothing less.

Couldn’t be anything more.

Born and bred from ancestors that go back to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636.

To call me a Conservative is to miss the point.

To call me a Republican is to mistake me by a mile.

To call me an AMERICAN is to know me down to the bone. I suspect this blunt fact is true of all those who term themselves “Independents,” all those who call themselves “Conservative,” all those who joined the Tea Party, and the Trumpening; they and all the others who,

Came from the hills and mountains,
The valleys and the plains,
Some were kind and gentle,
And some too wild to tame.

That’s who we are and that’s who we shall always remain — Americans.

A single, obvious, and overarching word to cover a wide, wide tent:

Americans.

Americans all regardless of race, color, creed, or national origin.

Let’s rebrand ourselves from this point forward. Let us go back to the original brand:

When you are called a Conservative, you reply, “No, I am an AMERICAN.”

If someone tries to tar you with the label “Republican,” you must correct them by saying, “No, I am an AMERICAN.”

If accused of being some sort of stealth fascist by being labeled “Alt-Right,” you need to sort those mental midgets out by reminding them, “No, I am an AMERICAN.”

If they say you are arguing from Republican or Conservative views, point out to them that you are arguing from AMERICAN views only.

Do that consistently and we can all look forward to future disputes and elections that pit the “Progressives” against the AMERICANS. I know which way I’d bet.

Powerful, powerful stuff, and I love it. It’s precisely what I was groping towards when I came up with that “Real American” formulation of mine not too long ago. But Gerard’s version is way better: simple, precise, to the point, and unassailable by anybody who isn’t—as our contemporary Enemies, Domestic™ blockheads are—actively ANTI-American.

Let the Progtards go on trying to conceal what they really are with their habitual redefining and rebranding. Meanwhile, we can reclaim something that was always our own anyway; tweak the living hell out of some perpetually out-of-joint noses; and restore a sense of righteous pride in the word and all it’s supposed to represent—all in one swift and hard rhetorical punch right in their pinched, sallow faces.