I’ve been watching the wrong people.

If you know where I got this problem, you too have been watching the Wrong People- i.e. Tucker Carlson. Now, Carlson’s views are a mixed bag, in my limited experience, bits of a good worldview mixed with streaks of a bad one, but is he wrong to nearly deride the ‘right of a nation to exist’? Is national existence merely a fact of realpolitik, without moral weight on one side? Not really, but neither is the unequivocal ‘nations have a right to exist’ the correct option.

(It should be noted that I have not investigated Carlson’s opinion on the matter beyond the initial clip. Almost certainly it is more refined than 30 seconds of Carlson’s style of rhetoric will convey.)

First, national governments have no native right to exist. The American government’s sole claim to proper existence is its commissioning by the people to govern us (which is part of why its every step beyond the Constitution is definitionally illegal). This consent is not, mind you, in alignment with the social contract theory. Consent does not create the government’s authority; that authority was created by God (Rom. 13:1-4), at least as we invest it in men at His command. Consent is the means by which men select other men for the civil office (Deut. 17:15), thereby placing in them the Genesis 9:5-6 power to deliver justice upon the murderer and his ilk.

Second, nations do have a right to exist. A ‘nation,’ in this sense, is a product of the family writ large; it is a people, by blood, marriage, and adoption (familial or cultural), with a common story. They have a relationship with each other which they properly maintain, and no man has the right to destroy that relationship, though persons can by choice disconnect themselves from it to some extent. Though the primary evil of genocide in its standard from is the amount of murder (and kidnapping and rape) involved, it is sinful to seek to destroy a people except on God’s clear command (as with the Canaanites- though remember that even the members of that people would have been accepted if they repented and turned to the Lord, as Rahab did).

Third, a nation has no right to sin. (A ‘right to sin’ is definitionally impossible, the equivalent of a square circle. The closest you can get is a lack of right to interfere with a sin, as with the government’s lack of right to interfere in a man making himself obese.) Insofar as a nation’s identity and story consists of sin, the Christian ought to eradicate it- while preserving all which is good in the culture, all which reflects His glory, in the new form which the eradication of sin pulls it into. So, for instance, an ancestor-worshipping culture (such as Japan) must abandon that ancestor worship- but they would properly keep a Christian respect for their fathers. So, in another case, a culture with a love of freedom (such as classic America) must abandon the elements of that which reach idolatry and desire for autonomy, but they must keep and develop the love of freedom in God, the freedom born of justice and law (Matt. 11:28-30).

In this eradication of sin, note, the government has the right only to punish what is criminal.

Fourth, a nation has a responsibility and therefore a right of self-government. In this area of theology I’ll admit to being as yet incompletely developed, but I can say this much. In some cases, that self-government may be sufficiently accomplished within the structure of a larger government structure. In all cases, civil government needs reform; sometimes that reform will in wisdom include secession from a larger governmental body (or, more rarely, unification of two, into one or into a confederation).

So does America have a right to exist? Does Israel? Yes, but the governments don’t, except as instruments of the people. Further, this right to exist does not justify any sin whatsoever; a single child killed in war is more than it will vindicate. What is a matter for realpolitik is the factual existence of those nations: from a factual perspective, the fact of a nation’s existence depends upon whether it can persist, not upon its ‘right.’ Then again, the sanctification of realpolitik interjects that righteousness makes a people great (prov. 28:12) and therefore righteousness (governing in accordance with the Lord’s law (Is. 1:16-27)) is the greatest tool for the clear-eyed practitioner of realpolitik’s calculus- so long as it is sincere righteousness (v14-17).

God bless.