Lincoln Would Reject “Heritage America”
He’d ask us to remember what truly makes us American.
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On July 10, 1858, Abraham Lincoln reminded Americans that half the country couldn’t trace a connection to the signers of the Declaration of Independence by blood or by soil. That half is now the vast majority. For most, our ancestors didn’t walk down Philadelphia’s cobbled streets, let alone hunch over that document in Independence Hall.
If having such a connection is all that defines an American, most of us wouldn’t be American at all. Thankfully, Lincoln argued, the one “electric cord” that runs through us all is a love of freedom and equality, irrespective of ancestry. An embrace of the Declaration’s sentiments is as good as blood relation to its signers, for it’s the American creed that “link[s] those patriotic hearts” together.
Today, segments of the Right disagree.
In the national conservative circles of MAGA, “Heritage Americans” have begun to claim that they, with ancestry dating back to the Civil War or earlier, are more worthy of the American label. They argue that loyalty should be measured by lineage, especially when—as the Department of Homeland Security put it—“The Enemies Are At The Gates.”
After receiving a year’s worth of xenophobic comments on X, Ohio’s Republican candidate for governor, Vivek Ramaswamy, sought to rebut the Heritage American argument in The New York Times:
No matter your ancestry, if you wait your turn and obtain citizenship, you are every bit as American as a Mayflower descendant, as long as you subscribe to the creed of the American founding and the culture that was born of it.
There’s that electric cord again—and it’s logically consistent, Ramaswamy insists. Equating loyalty with lineage wrongly implies that the nth-generation Irish-American Biden is more at home than Trump, the son and grandson of immigrants. Are Puritans, with their city upon a hill, better exemplars than their rowdy, gold-hungry predecessors at Jamestown? Surely, descendants of Patriots are more American than those of Loyalists? When pushed to its extreme, the Heritage America argument falls apart.
Ramaswamy has since left social media, heartened by the cheers he received for his arguments at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest. But the battle hasn’t been won. It’s easy enough to refute blood-and-soil reasoning at its worst, especially the incessant clamoring in Ramaswamy’s comment section. There are, however, more sophisticated counterpoints to Lincoln’s creedal definition—rebuttals advanced by our very own Vice President JD Vance.
In an address to the Claremont Institute last summer, Vance noted several problems with recognizing America as “just an idea” and basing American identity on the mere adoption of a creed.
Crucial to his argument is a memory of his children exploring the Great Plains. Watching their awe, he remembered the Americans who toiled to build his civilization, his family’s “shelter and sustenance.” Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were embodied in those fields, extracted from an ether of abstractions and maxims and distilled into a sensation of utter reverence.
For Vance, Lincoln’s conception belies this reverence. Creedalism insists upon a shared appreciation of American rights and freedoms, but to what end? “True citizenship” is not a laundry list of privileges owed to you, Vance argues. It’s a commitment to serve your fellow countrymen. It’s a rejection of the notion that America is a “contradictory” or “unfinished” project. True citizenship is gratitude, and with it, an obligation to promote the country’s greatness.
Vance expects everyone—“whether their ancestors were here before the Revolutionary War, or whether they arrived on our shores just a few short months ago”—to feel this sense of duty. It’s then notable that, in the very same speech, he insists:
We’re a particular place, with a particular people, and a particular set of beliefs and way of life.
To be clear, Vance has since criticized the out-and-out Heritage American stance, explaining that American identity can’t just be claimed by “some connection to the late 17th century” via genetics. Yet he argues that generational accretion of that Americanness matters. Creedal nationalists mistakenly believe that possessing the right beliefs helps you absorb American culture overnight, neglecting generations of shared lingo, art, music, and other cultural markers “you [can’t] teach in a book.”
In their view, the country simply cannot import millions of people, even if they wholeheartedly embrace our beliefs, and expect that “America won’t be changed for the worse.” There are customs and traditions that unite Americans, Vance observes, be it the food eaten for dinner or the sports teams followed. Countless individuals may appreciate American ideals, but can they feel grateful for day-to-day American life? Perhaps not. He continues: “For the vast bulk of Americans, it’s where we’re born… and where we ourselves will one day be buried.”
On its face, Vance’s point seems innocuous. It’s true that our modern customs are, in part, carried over from our nation’s “point of departure,” as Alexis de Tocqueville writes in Democracy in America. For instance, our political norms, beginning with the Mayflower Compact, have been honed for three centuries; what we conceive of as liberal democracy cannot be impervious to the ways in which generations of people lived it.
It’s also clear that the various cultural markers Vance speaks of, however quotidian, do form a uniquely American sensibility. Consider that last winter, Ramaswamy himself criticized an “American mediocrity” that glorifies jocks over valedictorians, hangouts over extracurriculars. Clearly, he recognizes Americanness as something identifiable—distinct enough to have its own flaws. It’s as John Steinbeck observes in America and Americans: while abroad, Steinbeck would be “instantly picked out as an American,” as would his Cherokee and Japanese neighbors. There’s an immediately recognizable American look, inexplicable to the world and to ourselves.
Here lies the difficulty of adopting Lincoln’s creedal conception.
There is a popularized and distinctive American identity and some people will display this Americanness more effortlessly than others. Yet Lincoln would say that one is no more a citizen than the other. There is a significance to the first Americans’ actions, for they set in motion certain habits that have reinforced our moral commitments. Yet Lincoln would deny that blood relation to the Founders confers any superior claim to the country. Americans rely upon this principled restraint lest any one cultural trait be exploited and framed as the true mark of a citizen. By tracing a spiritual connection back to the Founding, everyone can and must insist upon their belonging here.
Unfortunately for Vance, Lincoln’s conception allows for a polyphony of diverse, dissenting voices. You can be tethered by the electric cord and still be all that Vance detests, be it a “childless cat lady” or a Zohran Mamdani. You can embrace the moral sentiment of the Declaration while also denouncing—or, as seen in Minneapolis, losing your life to denounce—government action. Two dead Americans cannot be smeared as deranged leftist agitators before their bodies have gone cold.
The electric cord is too inclusive for Vance. So instead, he deploys ambiguously trite phrases like “distinctive people” and “way of life,” pandering to his base’s kitschy imagination of American identity. He claims Americans “won’t fight for abstractions,” as if we’re incapable of defending moral causes, fit only to serve a concrete people and homeland. He binds Americanness—at least for the “vast bulk” of us—to land and lineage, infusing patriotism with a tribalistic sharpness. Vance may be sanitizing the Heritage American argument, but his message is clear: gratitude for this country looks and feels a “particular” way and, perhaps, not everyone is capable of it.
Vance’s conception of citizenship betrays a pathetic indolence. Our history’s great statesmen honored the creedal definition not because it was politically expedient, but because it was right. In turn, they accepted the charge of governing a nation whose citizens disagree with each other, who take off their shoes and throw them at the television once in a while—a “great American moment,” President Reagan joked. Vance’s moral and civic laziness, on the other hand, is a search in vain for convenience. It’s no surprise when it then degenerates into the classic “us versus them” bile.
It’s easy to see why Vance wishes to flatten Lincoln’s idealism in favor of identitarian homogeneity—and has largely succeeded. After all, the electric cord represents one of America’s most exacting maxims.
For one, the electric cord asks more of you than the crude comparisons of physical features, language, and religion common to national identity formation around the world. Those with the adequate “Heritage” pedigree must believe they’re no more a citizen than an individual naturalized just a year ago. This humility is a choice, requiring a moral and civic forbearance unthinkable in the not-so-distant past.
Importantly, belief in the electric cord demands more than the base requirements of a tolerant liberalism, more than the “every man is orthodox to himself” mentality of cordial but strange bedfellows. By sharing one creed, Americans must conceive of every man as brethren, a bond deeper than a mutually pragmatic distaste of dying in religious wars. This imperative requires an inclusivity and hospitality foreign to most other countries—an undeniably counterintuitive aspiration.
Second, Lincoln requires self-confidence on the part of newer Americans. The recent immigrant slowly loses his mother tongue and defends his odd packed lunches at school. He’s teased over a foreign habit here, an incorrect pronunciation there. To tell him he’s just as American as the classmate with the white-picket-fence and family traditions inked in parchment… well, you’re asking this child to disbelieve what he sees with his own eyes.
James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son is particularly resonant in this regard. A Black man in an isolated Swiss outpost, Baldwin believed that even the most illiterate villagers would relate to the works of Dante, Shakespeare, and Rembrandt more than he. From the Chartres Cathedral to the Empire State Building, these weren’t “[his] creations, they did not contain [his] history.” Similarly, you’re asking the newly naturalized to have faith that creedal loyalty gives them an equal stake in America—that they too have ownership of the Empire State. See how tough this can be?
Lincoln’s electric cord demands unabashed and unrelenting idealism on the part of both old and new Americans. Yet, for over a decade, Americans have been encouraged to set aside their collective moral instincts in favor of basal self-interest. Our leaders have stooped to a low, anti-intellectual politics of name-calling—insults Vance himself can’t unequivocally denounce, even those leveled against his own wife. Meanwhile, online bots, with their divisive, propagandist spam, make up half of all Internet traffic. This is happening when six in ten Americans report feelings of isolation, rarely spending time with anyone, let alone those from different backgrounds.
Our nation is divided, psychologically tattered and fatigued. Vance knows this. With every hackneyed immigrant joke, he goads that clannish urge to retreat into ourselves and our own.
Unfortunately, lofty claims that “democracy is on the ballot” failed to resonate. Electric cord stump speeches may similarly fail.
If American leaders wish to reinvigorate the creedal definition, they must inculcate Lincoln’s maxim, creating daily reminders of the electric cord.
Civic education programs ought to teach young Americans that their futures are bound up together, even when separated by physical and digital chasms. National service opportunities must place adolescents into diverse communities across America so they can see just how unrealistic—how undesirable—the Heritage American conception is. New projects in technology and infrastructure should be emblems of America as the land of ingenuity and excellence, not merely the land of a particular people and custom.
Consciously reaffirming Lincoln’s creedal conception will require embedding the electric cord in everything taught and everything built. His conception is certainly demanding, asking Americans to orient their understanding of citizenship towards a humble, yet self-assured, commitment to shared ideals. But Americans can do this. They can aspire to more exalted civic virtues—even if they need the occasional reminder. Vance’s “people won’t fight for abstractions” refrain does not have to win out. His tribalism does not have to be our endgame.
Dhriti Jagadish studies Government at Claremont McKenna College, concentrating in political theory. She is an editor for the Henry Salvatori Center’s The Forum and a staff writer for the Claremont Independent.
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Lincoln would reject the entire current version of the party he helped to found, starting with its titular head.