Vivek Ramaswamy Is Wrong About American Identity And America

A disembodied notion of American identity means that America is really nothing at all, and no one is really an American...

After World War Two, these questions were largely swept under the rug. The dominant narrative, pushed by nearly every mainstream institution and both political parties, was that America was a credal, propositional country. Anyone, from any part of the world, professing any religion or worldview, could become an American...

In an op-ed for The New York Times this week, Vivek Ramaswamy defends this view, arguing that being an American really means nothing more than assenting to a set of intellectual propositions and swearing allegiance to the United States...

In Ramaswamy’s telling, Americanness is based on a set of beliefs...

Ramaswamy presents a false binary: either you agree with American propositionalism or you are a racist...

But actually it’s possible, and in fact necessary, to insist on a synthesis of America as an idea, a proposition, and America as a people and a nation with a particular history and culture. That culture, because it is at its core English and Christian, requires an affirmation of a very specific set of intellectual propositions that are unique to England and the Christian faith that shaped the English... 

The point here is that the universal ideals Ramaswamy claims are at the heart of American identity only make sense in light of English common law, constitutionalism, and Christianity - all of which belong to a particular people from a particular place. Without that context, they become meaningless. Generations of certain people, descendants mostly of the English, brought forth a nation that reflected and codified their particular religious beliefs, morality, language, customs, and folkways. They were not making a proposition for a universalist political project. Indeed, the Founders told us who America is for: ourselves and our posterity. John Jay famously described America as “one united people; a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs.”...

If anyone can be an American, then no one really is an American, and nothing in particular is owed to the American people by their leaders...