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“Who’s an American?” “What’s an American?” These questions have been hotly debated since the country was founded, and before. Lately, some people have taken to calling themselves “Heritage Americans.”
What do they mean? You will hear some sophisticated glosses—but, on balance, I find it hard to separate the new “Heritage Americanism” from the old, familiar nativism.
Moreover, “Heritage Americanism” is a form of identity politics. Another one. Our country has no shortage of them, alas.
Many of the “Heritage Americans,” I bet, would decry “hyphenated Americanism.” You’re an American or you’re not. But while the term “Heritage American” has no hyphen, it does have a modifier.
Like you, certainly, I know plenty of people from old American families and plenty of people from newer ones. Some people, from whatever family, are lousy Americans (in my judgment). Some are very good ones.
They are all individuals.
If I may adapt a phrase from our British cousins: American is as American does. And thinks and feels. Are you for the rule of law, limited government, individual rights, free enterprise, E pluribus unum, etc.? I know some “Heritage Americans” who could use some serious assimilation.
For most of my life, conservatives frequently said that recent arrivals were often more American than the native-born: more appreciative, more informed, less complacent.
When I was growing up in Michigan, I knew many immigrants and refugees. They tended to be gung-ho American. My fourth-grade teacher was from the Soviet Union—Ukraine, in particular. (It was from him that I first learned that a Ukrainian was not a Russian.)
For about 60 years, Bernard Bailyn taught Harvard kids US colonial and revolutionary history. In his classes were many bluebloods. Professor Bailyn was born into a Jewish family in 1922. Did he qualify as a “Heritage American”? He was certainly an authority on it—our heritage.
Peter Schramm was born in Hungary in 1946. He and his family escaped ten years later in the midst of the uprising (which was crushed by Soviet tanks). His father liked to say, “We were born Americans, but in the wrong place.”
(This reminds me of a slogan in Texas: “I wasn’t born in Texas, but I got here as fast as I could.”)
Peter Schramm was a political scientist and an intellectual hero of many conservatives. He often said that it was his mission in life to teach Americans their heritage and make them appreciative of it. For years, he led the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University in Ohio. The center has a podcast called The American Idea [ [link removed] ].
What’s that, “the American idea”? Well, in short, it’s freedom. (Richard Brookhiser wrote a book called Give Me Liberty: A History of America’s Exceptional Idea [ [link removed] ].) It is also a cluster of ideas: principles and ideals embodied in the American founding.
There are people who spit blood on hearing that “America is an idea” or that we are “a creedal nation.” In a podcast [ [link removed] ] a few years ago, I brought this up with Francis Fukuyama, the political philosopher.
He was born in Chicago. His father was born in Los Angeles. His mother was born in Kyoto. Some of the family was interned during World War II.
Though Chicago-born, Francis Fukuyama did much of his growing up in New York. He did not know a single other Japanese American. At school, he was taunted as a “Chinaman” and worse. The kids demanded to know, “What are you?”
His father said, “Tell ’em you’re an American.”
Said Fukuyama to me, “If America doesn’t have a creedal identity, then I’m not an American, and I believe I am an American—so I have a big personal stake in this.”
So do millions.
More from The Next Move:
Immigration is both controversial and normal in America. It is part and parcel of the American story. In 2024, the two major-party presidential nominees were Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Three of their four parents were immigrants. And the fourth was the son of an immigrant.
Are Harris and Trump “Heritage Americans”? They are Americans, like it, or them, or not.
On the campaign trail in 2024, Trump said over and over that immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.” It was the most flagrantly nativist campaign I could remember, including Pat Buchanan’s.
Anyway, I got to thinking about “blood” in presidential oratory—Republican oratory, in particular.
In 1985, Ronald Reagan stood at the United Nations and said [ [link removed] ], “America is committed to the world because so much of the world is inside America.” He further said, “The blood of each nation courses through the American vein and feeds the spirit that compels us to involve ourselves in the fate of this good earth.”
Abraham Lincoln was not yet president in 1858. But he would soon be, and he gave a speech [ [link removed] ] in Chicago that laid out important principles.
Immigrants are “our equals in all things,” said Lincoln. They have no connection to the Founders “by blood,” but they certainly have a connection to the truths enunciated in the Declaration of Independence. And they can claim these truths “as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that declaration.”
Not long ago, a friend of mine was arguing that immigration to America should be based on “merit”—“merit” meaning wealth, education, and the like. I knew about his ancestry (Italian, Slavic, Jewish). Gently, I asked, “What ‘merit’ did your ancestors have? They had grit, determination, courage. A desire to forge a better life.”
One country’s wretched refuse can be another country’s lucky acquisition.
Reagan served eight years as president, and he devoted his last speech [ [link removed] ] to the subject we have been discussing. Clearly, it was important to him.
He said,
Other countries may seek to compete with us, but in one vital area, as a beacon of freedom and opportunity that draws the people of the world, no country on earth comes close. This, I believe, is one of the most important sources of America’s greatness. We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people, our strength, from every country and every corner of the world, and by doing so, we continuously renew and enrich our nation.
He went on to say,
Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we’re a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always leading the world to the next frontier.
This quality is vital to our future as a nation. If we ever close the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.
Look, I am not a Pollyanna about immigrants, or about people in general, I hate to tell you. I am an immigration restrictionist (as anyone who is not for open borders is). I know full well that immigration brings headaches as well as blessings.
But this “Heritage American” business is a scam.
In every generation, there are people who say, “These guys will never fit in. Nor do they want to—they’re clannish. Their religion is weird, their food is stinky, and they themselves stink.” And then the grandchildren of those stinky newcomers say the same about others.
Many of the people talking up “Heritage Americanism” today are descendants of people who were despised by the “Heritage Americans” of an earlier time.
From unassimilable undesirable to nativist—America, what a country! (And the name of our leading neo-Nazi is “Fuentes.”)
On the fence about becoming a paid subscriber? We have a special offer to make the decision easier for you: $49 for an annual subscription—a 30% discount [ [link removed] ]—now through December 31. Anyone signed up as a premium subscriber, including existing supporters, will be automatically entered to win one of five chess sets signed by Garry Kasparov. Paid subscribers get exclusive benefits like interactive Zoom calls with Garry Kasparov.1
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