“Make America Pray Again” Is a Power Claim, Not a History Lesson

Pluralism vs. Birthright Politics

By Colin D. Smith

Attorney • Politician

 If you want to know where a society is headed, listen to what it says it is defending.

At the recent Munich Security Conference held on February 14, 2026, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered Europe reassurance: America and Europe “belong together.” But he didn’t ground that bond primarily in mutual interests or shared constitutional commitments. He grounded it in inheritance. America and Europe, he said, are “part of one civilization—Western civilization,” bound by “centuries of shared history,” “Christian faith,” “culture,” “heritage,” “language,” and “ancestry,” a “sacred inheritance” carried from the old world to the new. (Full transcript here:) U.S. State Department transcript of Rubio’s Munich speech

That is not merely a story about origins. It’s a theory of membership. And because Rubio describes mass migration as an “urgent threat” to “the survival of our civilization itself”—a danger to “the cohesion of our societies” and “the continuity of our culture”—his identity claim becomes a policy engine. Borders, in this framing, are not just instruments of public order. They are civilizational membranes. (Transcript)

This is geopolitics as anthropology—states defending not only interests but an inherited idea of “a people.” Once that move is made, policy debates stop being arguments about administration and start becoming arguments about identity: who belongs, what continuity requires, and what kinds of change count as “erasure.”

Here is the problem: a constitutional democracy cannot treat inherited identity as a membership credential without weakening equal citizenship. A pluralist democracy is supposed to be joinable—not by bloodline, but by reciprocal obligations under law; not by ancestral proximity, but by equal standing. Ancestry isn’t equally joinable. Neither is a “sacred inheritance” defined by a particular religious and ethno-historical lineage.

That is why inheritance talk—however poetic, however sincerely delivered—can drift toward a softer form of civic hierarchy. It creates two kinds of belonging: those who “fell heir” to the civilization, and those permitted to reside within it. You can call it “heritage” rather than “blood.” The structure remains: some people are “more us” than others.

And that structure should feel familiar. Earlier eras grounded political authority in lineage—divine-right monarchy treated inheritance as a title that bypassed the need for public justification. Today’s inheritance politics is more horizontal than vertical, but the logic rhymes: heritage is being used as ordination, a secular “divine right” of membership. It claims standing is grounded in what you are born into, not in what can be justified among equals.

The same voices that scold citizens to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” are now describing political belonging as something you inherit—“ancestry,” “heritage,” a “sacred inheritance.” That isn’t rugged individualism. It’s inherited status. It’s bootstrap morality for economics, and birthright morality for belonging. (Transcript)

To be clear: acknowledging history isn’t the problem. Christianity, European institutions, and successive migrations undeniably shaped American life. Naming cathedrals and universities and the rule of law isn’t “extremism.” It’s an account of influence.

The problem is when influence becomes entitlement—when a historical description is turned into a political warrant. A constitutional order doesn’t exist to preserve a civilizational bloodline. It exists to secure equal standing under common law for people who do not share a bloodline.

A civic border policy (order without ordination)

This is the moment where critics will try to force a false choice: either you accept inheritance politics, or you’re for borderlessness. That’s a trap. A civic pluralist approach can support firm, orderly borders without turning identity into a gatekeeping test.

A civic border policy starts with three premises:

1. The state has a legitimate duty to control entry—to maintain public order, protect safety, and preserve the institutional capacity that makes rights meaningful (courts that function, schools that can teach, systems that can administer law). Border control is a core function of sovereignty.

2. The criteria must be publicly justifiable, not ascriptive. Lawful limits can be based on demonstrable capacities and obligations: security screening, background checks, labor and housing capacity, public health requirements, manageable numbers, clear rules for asylum, and consistent enforcement. What they should not be based on—if equal citizenship means anything—is inherited identity as a moral ranking of who counts.

3. Integration is civic, not ancestral. A pluralist society can expect assimilation to constitutional norms: rule of law, nondiscrimination, equal rights, freedom of conscience, and democratic procedures. But it cannot require cultural conversion into a single “civilizational” essence as a condition of dignity or belonging.

That approach can be strict and coherent. It can reduce chaos and exploitation. And it can do so without implying that the polity is a family heirloom.

Why the inheritance frame is corrosive

Once inherited identity becomes the thing that must be preserved, pluralism becomes suspicious by definition. Newcomers are not potential co-authors of a common civic project; they are potential agents of “erasure.” Political disagreement ceases to be ordinary democratic contention and becomes civilizational sabotage. The whole point of constitutional protections—equal rights, freedom of conscience, nondiscrimination—begins to look like an obstacle to the “deeper” task: defending “who we are.”

But a confident constitutional democracy doesn’t need to rank citizens by proximity to a sacred lineage. It can honor the past without turning it into a gate. It can say: yes, we inherit traditions, religious influences, languages, and art. And also: the political community is not a bloodline. It is a promise—equal standing under common laws—made to people who will never share a single history, and do not need to.

If Rubio’s goal is a strong West, that’s the West worth defending: one strong enough to uphold order without ordination—one that can secure borders without quietly converting ancestry into a title to belonging.