Who Are We, Even?

Transcending ideology, blood, and soil

Who are we, as Americans? When you live in Europe for any length of time, you learn that — at least among those democracies — America has a very peculiarly contested identity. In Europe, it is still a concept clearly connected to ethnic groups; classical nations tied at least by language (Switzerland being a notable exception). My daughter could be born in the Netherlands, have a perfect Dutch accent, and never be totally received as Dutch. This is still a point of social tension that makes the universalization of the  ‘but where are you from really’ question that Americans of Asian or sub-continental Asian descent experience just universal to all outsiders. My Czech wife on the other hand was basically considered American within about 6–10 months of living in America by everyone she met. 

Now America has its issues too, as it’s impossible not to know, but this is still striking. It was something I noticed right away when I lived abroad for the first time. National identity, for most countries, is wrapped up in ancient myth, symbols, ethnicity, language and soil. A former professor of mine called this the ‘old testament’ view of identity. The Israelites were a people, promised a homeland deeply connected to them. The blessings of this status were uniquely held by these people. To join was not open to all. Following the Law was not required to be part of these people. A performed way of life was an act of fidelity to that identity, but not essential to it. You can be a Czech person, and not perform as Czech and still be Czech. Treason cannot end your Czechness in the eyes of Czechs. One is ‘of that people’. Like the Israelites, they are united by a mythology, a history, one largely lost to the mists of time.

By contrast, America is one of very few countries that has ‘birthright citizenship’ where being born here is the most solid ground of citizenship that exists.  All one needs to do is step across the Rio Grande, like the Israelites crossing the Jordan, and have children on U.S. soil and they are citizens.  People criticize it, but I think that’s beautiful.  And, I think the people that criticize it do so from a particular view of what America is.  

But like other settler societies (like Australia or New Zealand) the  United States can’t rely on appeals to soil or a misty mythological past united by an unbroken chain of parents begetting children. And unlike most settler societies, America was, from the beginning, a mixed bag of different nationalities from different colonial powers and (often noncomforming) religious communities. America became united around a way of living and self-governing, and developed a sense of some commonly appreciated values and ideas. Indeed, it was on this foundation of Edmund Burke’s support that American independence was laid: The unique character, outlook, and way of living so differed from the home country, that imperial rule had grown so obnoxiously at odds with the values and way of life of those people that the Crown could not effectively govern it in his eyes.  To Burke, Americans had a peculiar character.

So, there are many lenses by which Americans have reflected upon what America is and who Americans are.  But I am going to posit as a back-of-the-napkin exercise 4 main streams of thinking about the American project and identity.

Yet I worry that one of these key elements of our identity has lost a major voice in our politics.The destruction of any identifiable sensible and imaginative conservatism in the GOP and liberalism in the Democratic Party, have been replaced by some hobgoblins of American history that come oh-so-naturally to Europeans, but have only popped up sporadically in American history: The ethno-nationalists, and nativists, and the radical ideologues.

I would summarize the four approaches that I see to American political identity thusly.

1.) America is an unrealized ideal. 

2.) America is a defiled ideal.

3.) America is a way.

4.) America is a people.

Now to a different extent, over time, the different political parties and factions have given voice to these different voices in varying measure. 

However, to speak in generalities and central tendencies (and applying all the usual and appropriate caveats thereto) mainly I think it’s fair to say that the current American centrist liberal tends to see America as an unrealized ideal. On the other hand, those further left see it as a defiled ideal from which we must purge the Clearly Wrong ideals from being discussed, and rip up branch and root, all evidence of the defilement and purge it Kathartically in the belief that doing so will cleanse and improve society. 

This sentiment is perhaps typified by the New York Times 1619 project, which seeks to recast the entirety of the American Project as ‘really about’ slavery and little else. Liberals have often been confused into thinking that those to their left are actually liberals, due to the sharing of similar sounding ideals. However, this confusion is an error. A gulf separates a liberal from a fundamentally radical position, though it is one consistently and historically unrecognized even in retrospect. The New York Times’ rather rosy coverage of the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution provides another testimony to this stubborn no-enemies-to-our-left blind spot.  It’s hard to imagine coverage even remotely similar in tone about Pinochet’s Chile, Franco’s Spain, or Hitler’s Germany.

But we need our ideals. These become the modus for change and growth, and that’s important. It needs to be kept in balance with the practical demands of the moment, but if we focus too much on maintaining our current gains, we never achieve new ones. However, Democrats are currently in an often unrecognized war between two groups that largely differ on what America is, who we are in reference to that, and thus how we must proceed. Should we care about equality or equity, for instance?  Are civic foundations essential to maintain even if they slow progress on other issues?

On the other side, the current push and energy on the far right seems increasingly channelling the hobgoblin of nativism, where America is seen as ‘a people’ in an ethno-nationalist sense. This view with connections to ‘blood and soil’ reasonings and instincts has almost entirely purged any other view from the Republican mainstream. The raw interests of ‘the people’, however defined, trumps any ideal, norm, or process.

Centrists, conservatives, and most of the old parties of American political history before the rise of the Republicans in the run-up to the Civil War, (and excluding the Jacksonian Democrats in the second party system) I would argue, tended to see America as ‘a way’. It was a system and an approach to self-government where living together in peace, liberty, and co-developed prosperity mattered. It was a politics of what John Gray referred to as a modus vivendi school of liberalism as embodied by thinkers like Thomas Hobbes, Edmund Burke, David Hume, and Michael Oakeshott. Adhere to those norms and ways — whatever they may be at the time (though often anchored by the constitutional story and ‘civic religion’) — and you are an American. Americans were distinguished by the profession of and adherence to ‘the way of the American’. 

What constituted the essential elements of ‘the way’ was the core object of negotiation in the American project from the perspective of ‘Americaness as way’. Does it require one to live in a certain type of house? What about one who engages in different kinds of protest? But core domains were about fidelity to political processes and participation. Civics, commitment to enhancing and investing in institutions, fair play, law abidingness, and basic patriotism were key stalwart elements of this perspective. Being able to fully participate in ‘the way’ was a key element and frame of progress, such as it was, for those of this view. But, the core question guiding its reform was ‘what is necessary for citizens to live together in prosperity, freedom, and peace’ rather than the realization of a very specific moral programme or the enshrinement of a particular ethnicity.

But as the center empties and (real) conservatives and moderate liberals see their space in the political discourse dry up, we see ‘America as defiled ideal’ and ‘America as a people’ become the dominant and clearly most blisteringly mutually hostile visions motivating much of our discourse. It’s hard to imagine a more incendiary possible clash than one between the camp of ‘the defiled ideal’ and the camp of ‘blood and soil’. 

Where ‘the defiled’ and ‘the unrealized’ can easily mistake each other as like-minded friends, there is  no mistaking the zero-sum conflict between the world of faux-intellectualized radical ideal-driven change, and faux-emotionalist base-interest driven blood-and soil reactionism. The bonds of tribal affection both have their own clear idols of ‘the ideology’ and a common image of ‘the Volk’. 

Likewise, to the extent that an ethno-nationalist movement can paint a picture of its group as merely a robust approach to enforcing a highly restrictive ‘way’, ‘America as way’ folks can easily mistake ‘America as people’ for more mildly misguided purveyors of an overly restricted approach to ‘the way’ than they are. They can have a ‘no-enemies-to-our-right’ problem, and fail to realize the danger, until  it’s too late, of   flirting with those forces for votes. This is why in the early period of the insurgency, the GOP old-line conservatives opposed Trump and didn't take him seriously, and now are mostly outside power within the GOP or out of the GOP as NeverTrumpers. 

But the natural pairing for effective governance are those who see “America as way” and “American as unrealized ideal”. Both are able to compromise, and these two views compliment each other nicely. “America as way” folks can get a little too enthusiastic about their norms and normalcy. An America-as-unrealized-idealer can get a little too enthusiastic about reform, but both have the common good at heart, rather than a separate idol where only those of appropriate parentage or ideological conformity need apply for full consideration in the brave new world. 

Unfortunately, I feel we hear very little from ‘old liberals’ and ‘old conservatives’ with their optimism for context driven, fact based (rather than ideology based), reform and greater concern with harmony than moral victory. I think they are missed, and I would hope that a robust centrist political culture would want to welcome these visions of “who we are” back into the mainstream.