Rosenberg accepts the classic German view of the _Volk_, which he relates closely to the concept of race. "The state is nowadays no longer an independent idol, before which everything must bow down; the state is not even an end but is only a means for the preservation of the folk ... Forms of the state change, and laws of the state pass away; the folk remains. From this alone follows that the nation is the first and _last_, that to which everything else has to be subordinated."[38] "The new thought puts folk and race higher than the state and its forms. It declares protection of the folk more important than protection of a religious denomination, a class, the monarchy, or the republic; it sees in treason against the folk a greater crime than high treason against the state."[39] The essence of Rosenberg's racial ideas was incorporated in point 4 of the program of the Nazi Party, which reads as follows: "None but members of the nation [_Volk_] may be citizens of the State. None but those of German blood, whatever their creed, may be members of the nation. No Jew, therefore, may be a member of the nation."[40] After the Nazis came to power, this concept was made the basis of the German citizenship law of September 15, 1935. Commenting upon point 4 of the Nazi program in his pamphlet, _Nature, Principles, and Aims of the NSDAP_, Rosenberg wrote: An indispensable differentiation must be made sometime in the German _Volk_ consciousness: The right of nationality should not represent something which is received in the cradle as a gift, but should be regarded as a good which must be earned. Although every German is a subject of the state, the rights of nationality should only be received when at the age of twenty or twenty-two he has completed his education or his military service or has finished the labor service which he owes to the state and after having given evidence of honorable conduct. The right to nationality, which must be earned, must become an opportunity for every German to strive for complete humanity and achievement in the service of the _Volk_. This consciousness, which must always be kept alive, will cause him to regard this earned good quite differently from the way it was regarded in the past and today more than ever. The prevailing concept of state nationality completely ignores the idea of race. According to it whoever has a German passport is a German, whoever has Czech documents is a Czech, although he may have not a single drop of Czech blood in his veins ... National Socialism also sees in the nature of the structure and leadership of the state an outflowing of a definite character in the _Volk_. If one permits a wholly foreign race--subject to other impulses--to participate therein, the purity of the organic expression is falsified and the existence of the _Volk_ is crippled....