My great-grandfather and great grandmother were first and second generation Irish immigrants, respectively. They ended up having 10 sons, no daughters. In WWI, the eldest sons enlisted and the younger sons made plans to enlist when they reached the appropriate age. My grandfather fought in Europe and went to Mexico during the Pancho Villa invasion of 1916. My family has a letter from Woodrow Wilson thanking the family for their patriotic sacrifices.
Contrast this with groups of people shouting Death to America and committing desecration of the flag and historical monuments. Under our Bill of Rights, these people certainly have the right to assemble peacefully, and realistically can chant anything they want as long as they don't commit violence on others or vandalism. I wonder if they appreciate that very fact?
If I were to migrate to another country of my own free will, I would expect to be somewhat loyal to that country and its ideals, otherwise, why go there?
I'm sure that those opposed to the Trump/Vance ticket will ascribe some type of White Nationalist meaning to Mr. Vance's phrasing, but I think it's nothing more than perhaps some loyalty to the original values the colonies fought for to obtain independence from Great Britain.
Another thing that makes us American citizens is that we all trace our heritage back to the founders of our nation regardless of when we or our ancestors arrived. It's as if we were all in Philadelphia at the constitutional convention, in the audience at Gettysburg to hear Lincoln's address, and at other seminal moments in our nation's history.
Absolutely right! And Lincoln said exactly that in his “Electric Cord” speech, delivered July 10, 1858, at height of Know Nothing xenophobia. He said we Americans take pride this time of year in being descended from the men who wrote the Declaration of Independence. But there are many among us now who cannot trace a link by blood. Lincoln continued, magnificently, “but if they believe the words those old men wrote, they are blood of the blood, flesh of the flesh….” of the Founders no less than we are ourselves
Vance’s Blut and Boden, and Heimat, have no place in our Republic. We, like our sister Enlightenment Republic, France, have phrases that minimize his ascriptive categories: “accident of birth” and “hasard de naissance.”
Shared histories are important, of course, but more important are shared and universal, “self-evident,” principles.
Actually, I don't read Vance's comment 'on our terms' as being so much about ancestry as that going forward he and his like-minded brethren can and will set those terms - as values, ideology or beliefs - in ways that will be more stringent than the traditional notion of taking an oath of allegiance to the Constitution, but plan to raise the ideological bar for who will be deemed an American from here on. And that is far more ominous.
When Vance declared that the United States is not only a set of principles but also a homeland, he was positing that the peoples of middle America, including the people of Appalachia, have a shared history of building homes in America and defending their homes and families as well as the nation as a whole. Yet they have been abandoned by short-sighted and anti-national elite-driven economic policies, while they are erroneously called privileged by the media. He declared that they deserve leaders who attend to their interests and needs. I interpreted it as a call for inclusion, not an implicit advocacy of exclusion.
It seems to me that Vance is possibly working on a partial ideological reconceptualization, taking us beyond the divisive and dysfunctional ideological civil war between myopic conservatism and neoconservatism and toxic leftist superficiality. However, like all sides in the ideological civil war, he does not escape the assumptions of imperialism.
@Ralph J Hodosh says that "we all trace our heritage back to the founders," and I think he's on to something.
Converts to Judaism become part of the Jewish nation and are considered "Sons of Abraham". There's a bit of exegetical legerdemain there, relying on the fact that Abraham was called "Father of Many Nations", but that's to get around the problem of technically lying when recite liturgy claiming Abrahamic descent. The basic idea remains that despite membership being creedal and despite the recognition, in certain contexts, of foreign birth, converts adopt the history of the Jews along with their creed.
Such an idea should work as well for America. You become an American by adopting both the American creed and American history as your own.
The historical context of the founding of the U.S. is important to consider. The original 13 states were all specifically British colonies and most of the 1776 generation saw themselves as Englishmen whose rights had been transgressed by the crown. There were of course non-British people in the colonies, some of which had been absorbed from the Dutch, Swedes, etc. But my point is that making the move from being specifically British to being the melting pot took a long time, considerable annexations of French and Spanish areas, suppression of native Americans, and waves of immigration from places other than the British Isles. It also required a complete change of mindset which could only happen with leaders who established a universalist world view directly emanating from the Enlightenment.
Vance’s ideas about our identity are convoluted and not well reasoned. His real aim seems to be redressment for the poor midwestern blue collar workers who have been left behind in post-industrial America. How exactly he squares that grievance with a homeland based on ancestral ties is intellectually shaky.
My great-grandfather and great grandmother were first and second generation Irish immigrants, respectively. They ended up having 10 sons, no daughters. In WWI, the eldest sons enlisted and the younger sons made plans to enlist when they reached the appropriate age. My grandfather fought in Europe and went to Mexico during the Pancho Villa invasion of 1916. My family has a letter from Woodrow Wilson thanking the family for their patriotic sacrifices.
Contrast this with groups of people shouting Death to America and committing desecration of the flag and historical monuments. Under our Bill of Rights, these people certainly have the right to assemble peacefully, and realistically can chant anything they want as long as they don't commit violence on others or vandalism. I wonder if they appreciate that very fact?
If I were to migrate to another country of my own free will, I would expect to be somewhat loyal to that country and its ideals, otherwise, why go there?
I'm sure that those opposed to the Trump/Vance ticket will ascribe some type of White Nationalist meaning to Mr. Vance's phrasing, but I think it's nothing more than perhaps some loyalty to the original values the colonies fought for to obtain independence from Great Britain.
Another thing that makes us American citizens is that we all trace our heritage back to the founders of our nation regardless of when we or our ancestors arrived. It's as if we were all in Philadelphia at the constitutional convention, in the audience at Gettysburg to hear Lincoln's address, and at other seminal moments in our nation's history.
Absolutely right! And Lincoln said exactly that in his “Electric Cord” speech, delivered July 10, 1858, at height of Know Nothing xenophobia. He said we Americans take pride this time of year in being descended from the men who wrote the Declaration of Independence. But there are many among us now who cannot trace a link by blood. Lincoln continued, magnificently, “but if they believe the words those old men wrote, they are blood of the blood, flesh of the flesh….” of the Founders no less than we are ourselves
Vance’s Blut and Boden, and Heimat, have no place in our Republic. We, like our sister Enlightenment Republic, France, have phrases that minimize his ascriptive categories: “accident of birth” and “hasard de naissance.”
Shared histories are important, of course, but more important are shared and universal, “self-evident,” principles.
Actually, I don't read Vance's comment 'on our terms' as being so much about ancestry as that going forward he and his like-minded brethren can and will set those terms - as values, ideology or beliefs - in ways that will be more stringent than the traditional notion of taking an oath of allegiance to the Constitution, but plan to raise the ideological bar for who will be deemed an American from here on. And that is far more ominous.
This article is beautiful. I'm so happy for all us great Americans who appreciate creedal America.
When Vance declared that the United States is not only a set of principles but also a homeland, he was positing that the peoples of middle America, including the people of Appalachia, have a shared history of building homes in America and defending their homes and families as well as the nation as a whole. Yet they have been abandoned by short-sighted and anti-national elite-driven economic policies, while they are erroneously called privileged by the media. He declared that they deserve leaders who attend to their interests and needs. I interpreted it as a call for inclusion, not an implicit advocacy of exclusion.
It seems to me that Vance is possibly working on a partial ideological reconceptualization, taking us beyond the divisive and dysfunctional ideological civil war between myopic conservatism and neoconservatism and toxic leftist superficiality. However, like all sides in the ideological civil war, he does not escape the assumptions of imperialism.
https://charlesmckelvey.substack.com/p/jd-vance-and-the-future-of-maga
@Ralph J Hodosh says that "we all trace our heritage back to the founders," and I think he's on to something.
Converts to Judaism become part of the Jewish nation and are considered "Sons of Abraham". There's a bit of exegetical legerdemain there, relying on the fact that Abraham was called "Father of Many Nations", but that's to get around the problem of technically lying when recite liturgy claiming Abrahamic descent. The basic idea remains that despite membership being creedal and despite the recognition, in certain contexts, of foreign birth, converts adopt the history of the Jews along with their creed.
Such an idea should work as well for America. You become an American by adopting both the American creed and American history as your own.
The historical context of the founding of the U.S. is important to consider. The original 13 states were all specifically British colonies and most of the 1776 generation saw themselves as Englishmen whose rights had been transgressed by the crown. There were of course non-British people in the colonies, some of which had been absorbed from the Dutch, Swedes, etc. But my point is that making the move from being specifically British to being the melting pot took a long time, considerable annexations of French and Spanish areas, suppression of native Americans, and waves of immigration from places other than the British Isles. It also required a complete change of mindset which could only happen with leaders who established a universalist world view directly emanating from the Enlightenment.
Vance’s ideas about our identity are convoluted and not well reasoned. His real aim seems to be redressment for the poor midwestern blue collar workers who have been left behind in post-industrial America. How exactly he squares that grievance with a homeland based on ancestral ties is intellectually shaky.