Posted on 11/22/2025 10:31:24 AM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
The distinguished historian says the U.S. isn’t like other nations and never has been. There is no American ethnicity to back up the state.’
Democracy is a powerful and dangerous force, as America and the European democracies are discovering. Elites on both sides of the Atlantic haven’t done a very good job of handling it.
We have some anniversaries coming up next year that may help us. We have, of course, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The same day is the bicentennial of the deaths of the two founders most responsible for that great document, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. The Declaration is vital to understanding who we are as Americans.
There has been some talk recently that we aren’t and shouldn’t be a creedal nation—that beliefs in a creed are too permissive, too weak a basis for citizenship and that we need to realize that citizens with ancestors who go back several generations have a stronger stake in the country than more-recent immigrants.
I reject this position as passionately as I can. We have seen these blood-and-soil efforts before. In the 1890s, we also had a crisis over immigration. Some Americans tried to claim that because they had ancestors who fought in the Revolution or came here on the Mayflower, they were more American than the recent immigrants.
My wife and I have recently gotten to know a couple who came from Romania in the 1970s and became American citizens in 1980. Although they speak with a slight accent, I believe with all my heart that they are as American as someone whose ancestors came on the Mayflower. That is the beauty of America.
The United States isn’t a nation like other nations, and it never has been. There is...
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
I know Texas is, you don’t have to be born there if you become a true Texan in your heart.
Even though this was published in the Wall Street Journal, it is a good article.
Globalist piece of shyte.
I really admire people who know everything.
A simpler way of saying it is that America is an idea aiming for an ideal.
To a lesser extent, so is Texas.
There are six non-founding Presidents who understood this: Jackson, Lincoln, Teddy, JFK, Reagan, and Trump. It’s no accident, I think, that two were assassinated, and the other four had failed assassination attempts.
Stopped reading at the first word. We are not democracy.
Be specific?
The article is kinda right, but it is intended for evil. This article is intended to justify flooding America with Hindus, moslems, Africans, central and south Americans and Mexicans without the slightest tie to America.
The article is intended to denigrate white America.
I don’t know everything but I do know this:
The ONLY reason anyone would be pushing this argument now - the idea that those here for many generations have no greater claim to America than the unprecedented swarms of immigrants arriving now - is to stop MAGA.
This is an attempt discredit and even demonize President Trump and his populist MAGA movement - to frustrate our efforts to save the Republic by curbing unchecked immigration.
Of course we were all immigrants once. Of course immigration has been vital and essential to our development. But let’s celebrate that some other time.
Right now, we are being overrun by newcomers and anyone who objects or tries to stop it is being demonized.
You may be right, now that you have given context to your statement.
This is both a very wise and shrewd comment. It gets at the root of the differences between conservatism and progressivism. You listed: Jackson, Lincoln, Teddy, JFK, Reagan, and Trump.
Actually, there are many more than just this 6. Calvin Coolidge clearly belongs in this list as you intended it, making him lucky number seven. Coolidge’s speech about the Declaration is IMHO a master class in understanding all things America.
But actually, every major destructive Progressive President understood this fact. That means Woodrow Wilson, FDR, LBJ, and most notably Barack Obama also understood what you clearly stated.
“America is an idea aiming for an ideal”
The thing about the progressives, Wilson FDR LBJ OBama and yes, Theodore Roosevelt also deserves to be on THIS list because he was a big government progressive, he is nothing like limited government Reagan and Coolidge and Trump; is that all of the progressives correctly identified the idea-based notion of United States and it made them sick to their stomachs in one way or another. The thing of it is, the American idea necessarily results in a limited government. Its no more complex than grapefruit trees produce grapefruits. In the same way, the American idea produces limited government. When the flower blooms, that is what you get.
The Progressives however do not want an individualist or de-centralized federalist government, they want everything regulated in a way that its effectively “nationalized” but in an inconspicuous or invisible way. Total control without control is the progressive ideal. That’s what makes ABC administrative agencies so crucial to their core identity.
The progressive ideal is anathema to the American ideal. Progressives know it and they do not care, they will bring us to heel if its the last thing they do.
Exactly.
A truth that’s told with bad intent, beats all the lies you can invent.
Somebody else said the same thing, and now that I have been edified I agree.
The proof of what you say is right there in Sam Houston, Stephen F. Austin, Davey Crockett, Jerry Jeff Walker, Jim Bowie, Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving, Samuel Walker, Deaf Smith, Ranald Mackenzie and many many more.
If you are man enough to stake a claim there and they can’t find a way to run you out... you’re a Texan.
God blessed me with being born a Texan but I embrace my fellow passionate Texans who became authentic Texans, after being born somewhere else.
Nice list you posted.
The basic premise of the article is untrue, if the author means to say that America is least reliant on place of birth for citizenship, that appears to be quite untrue, few other western democracies have any constitutional requirement for their leadership positions to be held by native born citizens, as is the case in the U.S.A. ... Perhaps it is fair to say that in other cases, voter reluctance is the guarantee rather than a constitutional clause.
The author states that people from a variety of backgrounds can come to America and feel fully American. I will leave that to them to defend, but even if true, the same can be said for a variety of other nations. The same dynamics are in play in Canada. People have come here from the four corners of the earth and some find that they can succeed and reach a full standard of citizenship and integration, others say otherwise. Some if not all of the native born population do not really fully buy into the ethos either, to varying degrees.
Open up the borders, because some guy from Somalia can regurgitate that America was born on July 4 1776 has 3 branches of government, and has been here for 7 years. He's an American, by God! Oh, and give him all his American Fed.gov entitlements too! That's what the reality is.
More globalist crap from the WSJ
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