The debate on American identity cleaves between heritage and creed. The heritage side, prevalent among traditionalists and post-liberal conservatives, tends to define “Americaness” as coming from American stock — being born to American mothers and fathers who were born to American mothers and fathers who, in turn, also have roots in American land. The further back the lineage, the better, especially if it entails living through one of America’s great wars or periods of economic and social upheaval. This common history produces a common culture that, notwithstanding its pockets of particularity, is unified by shared experiences, shared language, and shared suffering, sacrifice, and triumph.
In contrast, creedal American identity, typically espoused by classically liberal conservatives, is defined by assent to foundational governing principles. The creedal perspective doesn’t care whether Americans were born and raised in the U.S., whether they embody traditional American culture, or even if they are fluent in English. What matters is fidelity to the Constitution.
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Who’s right? Both — but only in relation to each other.
The strength of the heritage position is that it reflects human nature: It’s natural to define political identity on cultural and linguistic bonds — and these bonds take time to develop. Building solidarity requires not only living in proximity to each other but having shared experiences, of moving through and building history together.
The heritage position’s weakness, however, is the shadow side of its strength. National identity can’t be determined by history alone because the past does not entirely determine the future. Think of the bitter disputes between nativist Americans and Irish immigrants captured in Martin Scorsese’s great film, Gangs of New York. The heritage position in the mid-19th century was that American identity and Irish identity were fundamentally incompatible and that the Irish could never become “true Americans.”
Yet who would take that position today? Irish immigrants didn’t just assimilate into America — they changed America, adding new strands to our culture that became constitutive elements of the life and character of many great American cities.
This doesn’t only apply to the Irish, of course. America, in large part, has gotten better over time — become more American — because of new peoples bringing old traditions with them. What is Chicago without the Polish? New York without the Italians? Miami without the Cubans? Los Angeles without the Mexicans? San Francisco without the Japanese and Chinese? My adopted state of Minnesota’s demurely nice culture (outside the Twin Cities) largely comes from Swedes and Norwegians.
The strength of the creedal position is that it’s America’s Declaration of Independence and Constitution that made this expansion of identity possible. Indeed, that’s the genius of the American experiment: It’s only because the country is founded on fixed principles that American culture can be dynamically diverse while remaining cohesively unified. Without the creed, ethnic tribalism would reign.
But, the heritage position rightly retorts, those creedal principles didn’t just materialize out of ahistorical dictates of disembodied reason. A group of biblically-minded men in a specific time in a specific place identified, codified, and promulgated them. To be sure, those principles originate in metaphysical truths that transcend any specific culture.
However, it’s only because our Founding Fathers already shared a common culture based on shared experiences, including the experience of tyranny, that they trusted each other enough to put their lives and fortunes on the line to create the nation. They were not only laying the foundation for a future American heritage — they were expressing the American heritage, however incipient, that already defined them. Absent this heritage, our creed wouldn’t have survived the decade, not to mention 250 years, because no one’s willing to fight and die for words on paper alone.
The debate between heritage and creed is thus complex but tractable. The creedal camp is right that assenting to Constitutional principles is what holds us together as a national body. The heritage camp remains right, however, that it’s our shared history, culture, and language that brought us into being, preserved us through time, and will continue to keep us alive in the future.
‘THE RIGHT WAY FORWARD’: IMMIGRATION AND NATIONAL IDENTITY
What does this mean for the immigration debate? America can and should continue to welcome newcomers. However, certain conditions must hold firm.
Beyond following our laws, immigrants must (a) reject beliefs that are inimical to our creed — that means many will be excluded; (b) assimilate to American culture, including learning fluent English, even as they make fresh contributions to American identity; (c) prove willing to sacrifice for their new country and pledge never to take advantage of it; and d) accept that gaining citizenship necessarily takes a long time because being an American means becoming an American.
This isn’t a novel approach. It’s how our country used to treat the question of immigration. We have the model, and it used to work well. We only need to re-implement it, using both creed and heritage as our guide forward.
Matthew Petrusek, PhD, is the Senior Director of the Word on Fire Institute.