In the aftermath of the mass shootings in Ohio and Texas, a bipartisan consensus is emerging that America must wage a war on white nationalist terror.
There were editorials in the liberal New York Times and the conservative National Review. George P. Bush, son of Jeb and the Texas land commissioner, published an eloquent call to arms. Decrying the left for downplaying radical Islamic terrorism and the right for failing to confront the white nationalist variety, Bush wrote: "Both are evil, both are real, and both must be confronted and conquered."
What Bush and others mean to say is that white nationalism, the warped ideology that claims (among other things) that nonwhites are seeking to replace whites, is toxic and must be battled with the urgency of other political wars of the past. Think of the war against poverty or the war on drugs. What the scourge of white nationalism does not demand, however, is the kind of shooting war launched after Sept. 11, 2001.