Our Senator Josh Hawley gave a virtuoso performance in demagoguery recently in a speech in which he professed that he is a “Christian Nationalist.” I don’t know what to think of this. If most people made such a declaration, I am inclined to accept their self-description, even though Christian Nationalism is an oxymoron. But Hawley is not most people. 

Does he really believe in Christian Nationalism? He might, though if he does he is a hell of a waste of a Stanford-Yale education. But when I recall that Hawley is running for re-election, and is running in the State of Missouri, I think his “Christian Nationalism” is a cynical appeal to the Christian barbarism that is dominant here. Even so, if he walks (runs) like a member of the Ku Klux Klan, if he quacks like a member of the Ku Klux Klan, then maybe he is a member of the Ku Klux Klan.