A conversation I’ve been having as of late, partly in response and related to my musing about who is an American, and in general because it is a conversation being had publicly, the idea of what an American is, is a consistent topic. A surprising growing number of people are adhering to the idea that Americans are an ethnic group of people, and that America is actually a nation that is founded for that specific ethnic group of people rather than the proposition of American ideals that the nation was founded on. I believe this is ultimately due to a misunderstanding, or even an intentional attempt at shifting of values of what an American is. I believe this is contrary to why the American Revolution was fought, and what the founding ideals of our nation are.
As stated in the linked musing above, more and more people are adhering to an idea that the American people are essentially a genetically related people, and that the nation of the United States is actually a nation founded for that genetic group of people, rather than for a people that share an idea. Typically, these people are covertly, or more often now, overtly, white nationalists, and believe that America needs to be emptied of all people who do not fit some definition of being of “European stock” (whatever that means). Even for the ones that do not argue covertly or overtly for racial restrictions on what makes someone “American”, many still contend that Americans are a people that exist distinctly not because of an idea (our founding ideals), but rather some nebulous concept of ‘America as a nation for the American people’. With this line of thinking, the American people are well within their rights to completely upend our system as the founders created it, and replace it with a different system entirely, typically one that is far more tyrannical and more centralized than we exist today (a highly protectionist state at the expense of liberty, freedom, civil rights, and so forth).
What unites these people under the larger banner of “Protecting Heritage Americans” is the idea that the US Constitution, and American founding philosophy in general (they derisively call liberalism, in which they conjoin American founding ideals with progressivism), are actually anti-American at their core, and need to be replaced by a system with a more centralized form of governance. They do not believe that everyone ought to enjoy the rights protected by the US Constitution, and even go as far as to argue that “people who are not citizens of America have rights on American soil”, leading to some insane conversations about how American citizens can basically just abuse anyone deemed a foreigner on American soil, and the foreigners have no recourse because “they aren’t supposed to be here”. This is disturbing turn of tyranny, and is ironically more or less the same line of thinking early 20th century progressives such as Woodrow Wilson thought about the American founders, and American ideals.
The question of “What is an American?” goes all the way back to the founding of the nation, and the reasons for that founding. Prior to July 4th, 1776, there were no Americans. Everyone in the colonies born to people hailing from the British Isles was an Englishmen, Scotsman, Welshmen, etc. The idea that there was a distinction between the colonists, and the British Isles did not exist, the colonies held loyalties to the Crown, and to Parliament, and the Crown and Parliament were expected to protect the colonies from outside threats, and enable the colonies to enjoy their rights as Englishmen. The colonies held their own local governments due to the great distance between them and the British Isles, and there was a tradition within British society of some level of local self governance, a tradition that existed all the way back to Roman rule over the British Isles millennia before. So long as the mutual respect for the tradition of self government, and respect for the authority of the Crown and the Parliament was maintained, the colonies and the Crown/Parliament maintained an amicable relationship.
This relationship was strained after the Seven Years/French and Indian Wars, in which the Kingdom of Great Britain incurred a massive debt fighting the French on mainland Europe, and fighting the French and their allies in the colonies. To the government, it only made sense that the colonies shoulder the burden for the cost of their defense, and so taxes were levied (there was also a prohibition on imports/exports to and from the colonies that did not go through Britain, which was also a tax collection scheme that raised the cost of imports and exports to the colonies). To the colonists, this was an affront to their right to local self government, their right to seek out trade deals and business interests as they see fit, at the expense of no representation in Parliament. To summarize the American Revolution, it began as a minor tax/trade dispute that snowballed out of control, and exposed fundamental differences between Great Britain, and the colonies. This differences were fundamentally based on a difference in ideals over where the right to rule comes from, what liberty is, and freedom from tyranny. This was ultimately a conflict based on a character difference between two groups of people that, at their core, were genetically related to each other.
America became a nation (canonically) on July 4th, 1776, with the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The purpose of the DoI was to outline the grievances of the colonists, and use those grievances as the basis of an argument to separate the American colonies from the Kingdom of Great Britain, and to found the colonies as a separate nation. Even within these colonies, there was disagreement about how the system of governance should be created, and whether there should be 13 independent nations descended from the 13 colonial territories, or whether there should be one, unified nation. There was disagreement about what their future government would look like, with many arguing the creation of an American Monarchy, while others argued for an Athenian style Democracy. Ultimately compromise was what balanced the competing interests of the Revolutionaries, and a single nation, divided into Several States with their own sovereignty within their borders, unified by a federal government empowered to protect those States from forces outside, and from within, and to ensure the rights of the people were protected. The fundamental reality is that America was founded on the ideals of John Locke and Thomas Paine; On the ideals that people have inherent liberties and rights that ought to be protected by a government they consent to be governed by, a government balanced by appropriate authorities and restrained by checks to ensure the balance of power.
At its core, America is a propositional nation. These are universal principles arrived at by a large group of people of a variety of backgrounds, beliefs, and interests, all balanced by compromises to ensure that their rights, their liberties, their property, would not be violated by a tyranny with arbitrary power.
Which is why the argument of those fighting under the banner of “protecting Heritage Americans” is rather strange. The literal founding of America had very little to do with protecting a people for the sake of being a people; It was a fight against arbitrary tyranny hellbent on infringing on universal principles. It should grossly offend anyone with any knowledge of American history, that the ideals of America ought only be limited to a specific people limited by an extant geography. If all Americans died out today, yet the extant philosophy, culture, and history of America survived, America could be reborn in a future, by people with no familial relation to the founding Americans. This is what makes America such a powerful, and terrifying force for those who stand against us. History has demonstrated time and time again that groups of people come and go. Ideals, however, have been shown to stand the test of time.