National Pride and State Decay
What does it mean to have national pride? As another Fourth of July arrives in the heat of the Danish summer I find myself unsure of what I’m feeling about my home country. I’ve written before about how my move abroad has actually made me a patriotic American in a way I never was while living at home. The promise of America - that every day thousands of future Americans are born around the globe - is unique in the democratic world. These are people who will one day move, make a life, start a family, and integrate themselves into the grand multi-fiber fabric that is the United States of America.
But as America’s 249th birthday arrives today I’m feeling emotionally mixed. The Trump administration is not just pushing policy that I disagree with or dislike, they are actively working to change the definition of America. They wish to redefine the nation, reshape the country, and decimate the animating features that I believe have made America the strongest country on the planet. This administration is more than just an assault on the laws, decency, and foreign standing of America - they assault the very pillars on which I believe America is the best country in the world.
Out of many, one
Destruction can be clarifying. Many Americans don’t seem to have a real definitional understanding of their country. After a plurality of voters decided to re-elect a twice impeached, convicted criminal who fomented an insurrection because they thought eggs were too expensive, I felt that maybe I was wrong about my country. That maybe the nation isn’t what I thought it was. Maybe, when it comes right down to it, very few people give much of a thought to what their country stands for, who is counted in their nation, and how the state should support those answers.
We like to bandy about the word ‘nation’ in a way that cheapens its importance in post 19th century politics. Nationhood isn’t a given, and not all countries have singular nations. One of the great achievements of American nationhood has been the ability to craft a concept of nation without the strict bonds of centuries of history and mythmaking, or shared religious belief. It’s not always been this way.
The original colonies were almost entirely composed of people from England. Overtime, through struggle and facing deep discrimination, folks from various other backgrounds fought their way into being accepted as part of the American nation. Slavery of African Americans persisted for the first 90 years of our country’s history. The country went to war over the question of not just whether black folks could be a part of the nation but if they could be considered full humans at all! Their progeny fought for over 100 years after the civil war before using the power of the state to remove laws which had forcefully attempted to keep them separated from the nation. Immigrants from other European countries had to overcome cultural discrimination before being eventually accepted as integral elements of the nation and the national culture. Asian Americans were interned in concentration camps during World War II because their loyalty was questioned. The story of American nation includes numerous attempts to define it down to an insular, ethnic and religious group. But time and time again, Americans have fought for and accepted a wider definition of their nationhood.
Redefining the Nation by using the power of the State
The American nation has changed as the country has adapted. Humanity's greatest attribute is the ability to adapt to challenges, the ability of the American nation to adapt has made it the most dynamic in the world. That flexibility and dynamism is a direct outcome of always finding ways to incorporate new voices and communities
There have always been nativist political forces who seek to use the power of the state or to shape the culture to prevent various groups from achieving access to the American nation. By and large these movements have failed. Italian Americans are Americans, German Americans are Americans, Africans Americans are Americans, and on down the line. That’s because those who wish to see the American nation as more than just a single ethnicity or religious group have used the state to make that a reality. The 14th Amendment freed the slaves and also established an America where to be born in America was to be an American. It’s an absolutely radical idea, and one that has worked to incorporate millions more people into the American nation.
The Trump administration’s defining mission is to reshape the nation. It uses the full might of the American state to re-define who is allowed to call themselves American. People like JD Vance and Stephen Miller approach politics from very different temperaments but both share in a vision of the American nation which hews to a particular version of the which is mostly white, christian, and rural. Miller’s vision seems born of little more than pure racial animus, what we used to just call racism. While Vance’s version of the American nation is born from his roots (and seeming shame) in coming from rural, poor appalachia.
Folks like Vance and Miller claim to be National Conservatives, bent on preserving the nation. But really what they espouse is a form of national revanchism. It’s a revanchism which has lost repeatedly throughout American history but not without taking the fight. These movements are often populist, using grievance to drive wedges in the nation. The Jacksonian revolution was, in part, a populist revolt by southerners in creating more space for slavery by driving Native American tribes from their territories. The American Civil War was the culmination of a conflict over whether black Americans were human enough to be afforded basic rights. The isolationists between the World Wars were little more than nativists who couldn’t understand why America should help lesser countries. And organizations like the John Birch Society used anti-communism as a wedge to fight against the Civil Rights movement.
The MAGA movement has coalesced around old-hat nativism wrapped in populist rhetoric about the forgotten man. At the 2024 Republican National Convention, Vance made clear his belief that America was not an idea, it was a homeland. He then referenced a cemetery where generations of Vances had been buried. Implicit in his view is that some people are Americans and other people cannot be Americans. He doesn’t make it explicit because this definition would disclude the millions of Americans whose families migrated only one or two generations ago. It discludes the millions of Americans descended from slaves. Vance’s blood and soil nationalism seeks to make the American nation smaller, weaker, more homogenous, and most importantly - less virtuous.
A Sclerotic State
While the nation makes the country, the state runs it. The state which has been so cunningly used to expand the nation and keep America dynamic has become sclerotic and confused. The founders spent the entire summer of 1789 drafting up a founding document which was to create a state which could not act hastily but also represented the concerns of various stakeholders.
That system, while highly exclusionary at the start, provided the basis for expanding the nation and extending power to a greater and greater number of people. Also that system, while robust through most of the country's history, has broken down. It’s broken down because all systems break eventually and because many of its weak points went unexploited for a very long time. But in the last half century this system built on checks and balances has been weaponized against itself. What once protected the country from hasty decision making now prevents almost all legislation. Competition between the states and the branches has become competition between two political parties.
The American state was built to allow for a strong legislature, a capable executive, and a watchful judiciary. But today, the legislature (when controlled by the same party as the White house) has completely given up its lawmaking and oversight supremacy to an executive which has accumulated greater and greater power over the last 100 years. Meanwhile, the judiciary refuses to recognize the fundamental shift in authority from the legislature to the executive. Instead, the judiciary pretends that Congress still has enough prerogative and institutional pride to defend itself from an executive who steals its legal remit.
Throw in a wanna-be strongman into the White House and we have a state which has relinquished its ability to represent the nation as it is. Which is why the Trump administration feels emboldened to use state power to reshape the nation. They know the legislature will do nothing meaningful to stifle their goals and the Supreme Court will rubber stamp any decision with no consideration of the actual realities of either body or the political environment writ large
This state is not up to the task of defending the nation. As Americans it's our duty to stand up this Fourth of July and demand from the state what we know our country is. It is not the exclusionary vision that Vance and Miller espouse. It is not the racist and cruel vision that Southern slaveholders wanted. It is not a country which locks immigrants into prisons and concentration camps without due process. It is a country made by and for the people. E pluribus unum - out of many, one.
A Country for Americans
The story of America is a story of incredible human ingenuity and terrible cruelty, of triumphant proceduralism and byzantine legalism. America has not always done right by every person, but unlike so many other countries it’s been willing to adapt and change faster than others. I do not believe that the arch of history inexorably bends towards justice but I do believe that as long as we hold justice in our hearts we can fight to see a better tomorrow.
I will always believe in the America which knows that a little girl born in India can become just as American as a little boy born in Indiana. We are strong because we do not exclude based on race, ethnicity, religion or birth. We are strong because we adapt. I don’t care what America’s racial or religious makeup will look like in 2050 because I know that America is an idea which is stronger than any nativists’ pathetic revanchist vision. They fundamentally wish to see a weaker and less capable America. They hate the country they claim to love.
My patriotism today is born from my conviction that my vision of a creedal nation and a complex history cannot be taken away. I know that my love of country will always be stronger than a shallow display of a bumper sticker flag or a red MAGA hat.
So for this Fourth of July, I will celebrate the American nation as it is - strong, boisterous, diverse, messy, hasty, and damaged - but not yet broken.
